Home › Glossary › Letter K

Kairotic moment

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A pivotal, opportune moment in a poem—often fleeting or irreversible—that carries heightened emotional, moral, or narrative significance.

Detailed Definition
Kairotic moment in poetry refers to a rhetorically or thematically opportune instant—kairos being Greek for the “right” or “critical” time—when action, insight, or utterance carries heightened significance; unlike chronological time (chronos), kairos is qualitative, and poets mark it through sudden volta, imperative address, or symbolic convergence, as in Auden’s “Stop all the clocks,” where personal grief intersects with universal pause.
Example
Example in poetry:
Kairotic moment: “The pause before ‘I love you’—that’s the poem” (timely); “When protest chant becomes psalm” (historical); “Kairos: not clock-time, but rupture” (definitional); “Poem captures the hinge of change” (lyric)
Additional Notes
The opportune moment for speech or action—Greek rhetorical concept. In poetry, timing of revelation or turn. Related to volta and dramatic timing. Modern interest in rhetoric of the moment.
Also Known As
opportune moment crux temporis
Skip to main content