Home › Glossary › Letter P

Pan flute

Musical Instrument
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

A set of end-blown pipes of varying lengths, associated with the god Pan

Detailed Definition
The pan flute appears in poetry as a symbol of pastoral myth, rustic innocence, and nature’s music; its breathy, uneven tones evoke Arcadian landscapes, lost idylls, and the primal link between human emotion and the wild, making it a timeless metaphor for lyrical simplicity and divine inspiration.
Example
Example in poetry:
Coleridge heard pan flute in Xanadu: “Savage place! as holy and enchanted / As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted”; Its reeds channel river nymphs; “Pan flute sighs—goats forget grazing, listen”; In eco-poetry, the pan flute merges human and wild: “Cut reeds, but river sings through them.”
Additional Notes
The pan flute (or syrinx) consists of graduated tubes bound together, played by blowing across tops; its ancient Greek origins and pastoral associations make it a symbol of nature, myth, and simplicity—ideal for poems about Arcadian ideals, the fragmentation of voice into multiple pipes, or the wind as co-composer.
Also Known As
Panpipes syrinx
Skip to main content