Home › Glossary › Letter M

mournful phrase

Phrase
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 phrase employing language that expresses deep grief, sorrow, or lamentation, often characterized by melancholic diction, elegiac tone, and imagery of loss or despair, commonly found in elegies, dirges, and poems commemorating death or expressing profound sadness.

Detailed Definition
Moist with tears and weighted with loss, mournful phrases dominate elegies and threnodies; their cadence, diction, and imagery evoke absence, memory, and the struggle to articulate irreparable rupture through restrained or shattered syntax.
Example
Example in poetry:
The mournful phrase lingered in the chapel’s stone; it was the sigh of a mother who lost her son; it was the echo of a name never spoken again; the mournful phrase is grief given voice.
Additional Notes
Mournful phrases express grief: “The mournful phrase lingered in the chapel’s stone”; they are central to elegies and dirges; use somber diction, slow rhythm, and natural imagery of decay; avoid melodrama—power lies in quietness; related to lamenting phrase, dying phrase, and heart phrase; ideal for poems of loss, memory, or historical trauma.
Also Known As
elegiac phrase sorrow phrase grief phrase
Skip to main content