Home › Glossary › Letter O

Oneiric Imagery

Imagery
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

Imagery that is surreal, dream-like, illogical, or fragmented, mimicking the visual and narrative logic of dreams.

Detailed Definition
Oneiric Imagery draws from dream logic—fluid identities, surreal juxtapositions, temporal distortion—to evoke subconscious states; prevalent in Symbolist and Surrealist poetry, it bypasses rational coherence to access emotional truth through hallucinatory, elusive visions.
Example
Example in poetry:
Oneiric Imagery: "Clocks melted like wax in the moon’s white room, / Stairways spiraled into clouds of perfume"—dreamlike, surreal images that evoke the logic and atmosphere of dreams.
Additional Notes
Oneiric Imagery evokes dreamlike quality through surreal juxtaposition and logic. From Greek "oneiros" (dream). Related to surrealism but broader. Study how dream logic differs from waking rationality in creating meaning.
Also Known As
Dream imagery Vision pictures Sleep imagery Oneiric pictures
Skip to main content