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Merged caesura

Device
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 poetic pause that blends or fuses with adjacent rhythms in verse

Detailed Definition
Merged caesura occurs when two internal pauses within a line blend into a single rhythmic break, smoothing syntactic segmentation; this subtle prosodic technique avoids choppiness while maintaining metrical flexibility in complex verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
Merged caesura (A strong mid-line pause that coincides with both a syntactic break and a metrical boundary, often marked by heavy punctuation); "He found his path; // but found his purpose lost"; "To err is human; // to forgive, divine"
Additional Notes
The fusion of two or more expected pauses (like a caesura and a line break/stop) into a single, strong pause; often done to emphasize the rhythmic or semantic weight of a single moment.
Also Known As
Fused caesura blended break joined pause Blended caesura
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