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Parallax

Science
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 apparent shift in an object's position caused by a change in the observer's viewpoint.

Detailed Definition
In poetry, parallax can describe how truth changes when seen from another angle. Astronomers use the effect to calculate distance, but poets may apply it to memory, identity, or conflicting accounts of an event. A speaker who revisits a childhood place may find that both the place and the self have shifted. The term is especially useful for poems concerned with perspective, uncertainty, and the gap between seeing and knowing.
Example
Example in poetry:
“By parallax, the moon seems to move against the hills” gives a poem a precise image of changing perspective; A poet can write, “From each window, grief had a different parallax,” showing how position changes perception; “The star was not wandering, only my parallax” uses the term to correct an illusion and suggest self-awareness; In a travel poem, two observers viewing the same mountain from different roads can become an analogy for parallax in memory or belief
Additional Notes
Parallax lets observers calculate distance by comparing an object's apparent position from two viewpoints, as with nearby stars.
Other Meanings of “Parallax”
Also Known As
Stellar Parallax Trigonometric Parallax
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