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Ornamental flourish

Device
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 stylistic embellishment in diction, sound, or form intended to delight or impress

Detailed Definition
An ornamental flourish is a moment of heightened stylistic display within a poem—such as a cascade of assonance, an intricate metaphor, or a syntactic inversion—designed to delight the ear or eye; it functions as a decorative peak that showcases the poet’s technical virtuosity.
Example
Example in poetry:
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 uses “darling buds of May” as ornamental flourish; Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” flourishes with “beaded bubbles winking at the brim”; Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” adds ornamental flourish through medieval tapestry imagery; Swinburne’s “Dolores” overflows with ornamental flourishes of sound and decadence.
Additional Notes
An ornamental flourish is a decorative linguistic or structural feature added for beauty rather than necessity; may include syntactic inversion, archaic diction, or elaborate rhyme.
Also Known As
Stylistic garnish lyrical decoration rhetorical bloom ornamental touch decorative flourish Ornamental line
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