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Nerve

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

A fiber that carries signals through the body, often used to suggest sensation, fear, sensitivity, or courage.

Detailed Definition
Poets use nerve to describe both the physical pathways of sensation and the emotional capacity to endure difficult experience. Frayed nerves can represent anxiety, overstimulation, or grief, while finding one's nerve can mean gathering courage. Because nerves transmit pain and touch, they make useful images for a speaker's responsiveness to the world. A poem may imagine nerves as wires, roots, sparks, or threads, linking private sensation to technological, natural, or social networks.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Every nerve became a listening wire” uses nerve as a metaphor for heightened anxiety; A poet might write “the cold found every nerve in my fingers” to make weather feel physically immediate; “Her nerves rang after the argument” turns an invisible bodily system into audible emotional tension; “Hope touched a nerve beneath the old scar” suggests that memory can cause a sudden, involuntary feeling
Additional Notes
A nerve may be literal or figurative. Poets use “raw nerve” for intense sensitivity and “nerve” for boldness, linking the body’s signal system to fear, pain, and courage.
Also Known As
Sinew
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