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Outcrop

Geology
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

An exposed portion of bedrock visible at Earth’s surface. It can represent revelation or the emergence of what was buried.

Detailed Definition
An outcrop is a place where bedrock or older geological material is exposed above soil, vegetation, or loose debris. In poetry, it can signal the sudden visibility of a buried history: a dark ridge appearing in a pasture, a scar of stone beside a road. Outcrops offer a natural metaphor for truths that surface despite concealment. Their rough, weathered faces also let poets set the brief human present against material that has endured immense spans of time.
Example
Example in poetry:
“An outcrop of sandstone rose from the grass like the back of a buried animal” uses an outcrop as a visible piece of underlying rock; “At the outcrop, students read layers of stone as if they were pages” makes geology an act of interpretation; A poet could write, “We rested on an outcrop above the valley, close to the earth’s old grammar,” joining place and deep time; “The outcrop showed a band of ash between older layers” can introduce evidence of a long-ago eruption
Additional Notes
An outcrop is bedrock exposed at the surface by erosion, excavation, or uplift. Geologists read its layers, textures, and fractures as evidence of Earth’s history. Poetically, it can represent an exposed truth: something once concealed now weathered into view.
Also Known As
Rock Exposure Exposure kopje
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