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Mouth

Anatomy
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

The opening used for eating, breathing, and speaking, often symbolizing voice, desire, silence, or hunger.

Detailed Definition
The mouth is a powerful poetic site because it joins nourishment, language, intimacy, and refusal. It can sing, kiss, swallow, cry out, remain shut, or speak a name, making it useful for poems about love, appetite, power, and testimony. Poets may compare a mouth to a wound, flower, cave, or door, stressing its openness and vulnerability. Its dual role in speech and eating allows writers to explore how words can sustain, wound, or fail.
Example
Example in poetry:
“O for a beaker full of the warm South” from Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” uses the mouth’s desire for drink to begin a poem of escape; “Mouth” can represent speech, as in “the town closed its mouth around the secret”; A poet might write “the cave opened its dark mouth” to make a landscape feature menacing; “Salt stayed in her mouth after goodbye” gives grief a lingering taste
Additional Notes
The mouth joins appetite and language, making it rich with contradictions. It can nourish, kiss, speak, lie, refuse, or remain closed; related ideas include voice, teeth, tongue, hunger, and silence.
Also Known As
Oral Cavity Maw Lips
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