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Landslide

Geology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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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

The downhill movement of rock, soil, or debris under gravity. It suggests collapse, momentum, and sudden irreversible change.

Detailed Definition
A landslide is the rapid or gradual movement of earth materials down a slope, often triggered by rain, erosion, earthquakes, or human disturbance. What seemed secure can give way when water loosens soil or a supporting layer fails. In poetry, a landslide can describe emotional overwhelm, social collapse, or the unstoppable consequences of a small initial fracture. Its imagery combines weight and motion: a mountain becoming a wave, solidity becoming danger, and stability revealed as temporary.
Example
Example in poetry:
After the landslide, the hillside lay across the road like a sentence abruptly stopped; A landslide can represent overwhelming emotion, as in “her anger came down in a landslide of stones”; The poem contrasts the mountain’s stillness with the sudden landslide that remakes the valley; In an elegy, a landslide may symbolize how one death shifts the ground beneath an entire family
Additional Notes
Landslides may be triggered by rain, earthquakes, erosion, or human disturbance. Use the term for a swift collapse whose consequences cannot easily be reversed.
Also Known As
Landslip Land Slip
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