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parish

Historical Office
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 local church district with its own priest and congregation; represents community life, rural order, or civic duty in British verse.

Detailed Definition
A parish was historically the local area served by a church and its clergy, and it could also mean the community itself. In the poem, the woman says she is “begging back her way” to her parish, suggesting a place of local belonging and possible relief.
Example
Example in poetry:
In the quoted ballad, “to her parish she / Was begging back her way,” parish means a local unit responsible for poor relief; Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village” evokes parish life as a social and rural structure; “The parish paid her passage home” shows the historical administrative sense rather than merely a church congregation; In modern poems, parish may still mean a church community or, in Louisiana usage, a civil district
Additional Notes
The word is familiar in church contexts, but its older local-administrative meaning may not be obvious to all readers.; Found in the poem, The Complaints of the Poor by Robert Southey
Other Meanings of “parish”
Also Known As
community ecclesiastical district congregation
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