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Neck

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 part of the body connecting the head to the torso, associated with exposure, bearing, and vulnerability.

Detailed Definition
The neck is often charged in poetry because it supports the head while remaining comparatively unprotected. A bowed neck may show shame, prayer, fatigue, or submission, while a lifted neck can suggest pride, alertness, or defiance. Poets may focus on the pulse at the neck to evoke life close to danger, or on a beloved's neck to create sensual intimacy. As a bridge between thought and body, the neck can also symbolize the difficulty of joining reason with feeling.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T. S. Eliot’s “thin arms and bare” neck imagery helps create a feeling of social exposure; A poet might write “snow cooled the back of her neck” to place the reader in a winter scene; “The necklace bruised his neck like a remembered hand” uses the neck to suggest intimacy and discomfort; “He turned his neck toward the sirens” makes a small bodily movement reveal attention and fear
Additional Notes
The neck can heighten a poem’s sense of exposure because it is both supportive and unprotected. Images of a bowed, turned, or bared neck may suggest submission, intimacy, strain, or threat.
Also Known As
Nape Isthmus
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