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Machine gun

Military
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

A gun capable of firing bullets automatically or in rapid succession. It can give verse a hard, repetitive cadence associated with sustained violence.

Detailed Definition
A machine gun uses mechanical loading and firing to deliver a high volume of bullets, making it a defining instrument of modern battlefield firepower. In poetry, its repeated report may become an oppressive meter, interrupting speech, birdsong, or thought. The weapon can symbolize industrial systems that reduce individual action to rhythm and procedure. Yet the phrase also keeps attention on the human operator, inviting poems to examine the distance between a hand on a trigger and the many lives reached by its fire.
Example
Example in poetry:
The machine gun shattered the meadow’s stillness into brief, repeated bursts; In a poem, the machine gun’s rhythm can imitate harsh percussion or interrupt a lyrical meter; The speaker remembers the machine gun not as an abstract weapon but as a sound that frightened birds; A poet might oppose the machine gun’s mechanical repetition with the irregular breathing of a wounded soldier.
Additional Notes
A machine gun fires automatically or in rapid succession while the trigger is held, distinguishing it from a manually operated rifle. In poetry, its repeated report can shape rhythm through short stresses, harsh consonants, and abrupt line breaks. Related terms include burst, ammunition, automatic fire, and suppressive fire, though these should not be treated as exact synonyms.
Also Known As
Automatic Weapon Machine Gunner's Gun MG Maxim gun
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