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Lugubrious

Mood
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

Describing a mood excessively sorrowful, gloomy, or theatrical in its mournfulness, often bordering on melodrama or despair.

Detailed Definition
Lugubrious mood in poetry amplifies sorrow into theatrical gloom through exaggerated diction, funereal rhythm, and macabre imagery; it appears in Gothic verse, satirical elegies, or melodramatic laments—like Poe or early Byron—where over-the-top despair becomes a stylistic choice, heightening emotional impact or critiquing sentimentality through its very excess.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “The Raven,” Poe’s speaker is lugubrious in his mourning for Lenore; Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” conveys lugubrious numbness; In “Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold laments with lugubrious despair; Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” portrays lugubrious aging; Thomas Hardy’s “The Voice” expresses lugubrious longing; In “Ode on Melancholy,” Keats links beauty and sorrow in a lugubrious meditation.
Additional Notes
Lugubrious mood conveys exaggerated or theatrical mournfulness; often rendered through funereal imagery, slow cadence, and hyperbolic sorrow—e.g., mock-elegies or Gothic verse; related to doleful, mournful, and dismal moods; carries a slightly ironic or archaic tone.
Also Known As
Mournful Doleful Melancholy Gloomy Funereal
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