Home › Glossary › Letter L

loom

Tools
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 loom is a frame or machine used to weave threads together into cloth.

Detailed Definition
The loom holds warp threads under tension while a shuttle or other device carries the weft across them, creating fabric through repeated crossing. It is one of poetry's richest tools because weaving has long symbolised fate, storytelling, memory, and social connection. Looms may evoke domestic industry, factory labour, women's work, or mythic figures who spin and weave human lives. The interlaced threads allow poets to imagine language, history, and relationships as patterns formed from separate strands under tension.
Example
Example in poetry:
In classical mythology and poetry, the loom often represents fate as divine figures weave the course of human lives; The loom clicked through the evening as threads crossed into cloth; A poet may compare language to weaving, with separate words forming a larger pattern; The abandoned loom can symbolise interrupted labour, absence, or a broken family tradition.
Additional Notes
The loom creates cloth by interlacing warp and weft, making it one of literature's most enduring symbols of connection and design. It may appear in mythology, domestic labour, factories, or poems about women's unrecorded work. Weaving readily represents storytelling, history, destiny, relationships, and the construction of identity from separate strands. Students should distinguish the loom from the spindle, which produces thread. Related terms include weaving, warp, weft, shuttle, thread, spindle, textile, pattern, fate, narrative, labour, connection, and inheritance.
Other Meanings of “loom”
Also Known As
weaving loom weaving frame
Skip to main content