Home › Glossary › Letter L

Lammas

Time And Calendar
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 traditional harvest festival held on 1 August. It marks the beginning of grain harvest and can suggest ripeness, labor, and seasonal change.

Detailed Definition
Lammas, historically observed on 1 August, celebrates the first bread made from newly harvested grain. Its name and customs connect fields, baking, labor, and communal thanksgiving. In poetry, Lammas can signal the shift from high summer toward harvest, when abundance already contains the knowledge of coming loss. References to wheat, loaves, scythes, and sun-dried stubble give poems a tactile calendar language for fertility, work, and impermanence.
Example
Example in poetry:
At Lammas, the first bread comes warm from the harvest field; A poet can use Lammas to mark August as a season of grain, labor, and gathering; “The Lammas loaf broke open like a small gold sun” turns a harvest ritual into vivid imagery; Lammas may deepen a pastoral poem by reminding readers that abundance depends on work and weather
Additional Notes
The name comes from “loaf mass,” connecting harvest grain with bread and ritual offering. It can emphasize dependence on land, labor, weather, and communal survival.
Other Meanings of “Lammas”
Also Known As
Loaf Mass Lughnasadh
Skip to main content