Home › Glossary › Letter P

Pause

Sound
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 break in the flow of speech or verse, which may be metrical (caesura) or rhetorical (marked by punctuation)

Explore this topic in depth (3)

Volta — A volta is a turn: the moment when a poem changes direction in its thinking, feeling, argument, perspective, tone or imagery. Though closely associated with the sonnet, the volta can occur in almost any poem and at almost any point.

How to Read Poetry Aloud — Reading poetry aloud is not about sounding theatrical. It is a way of listening more closely to how sentences, lines, rhythms, sounds and silences work together.

Sound Devices in Poetry — Sound devices are the patterns of speech that make a poem memorable to the ear as well as meaningful on the page. This guide explains how to hear alliteration, assonance, consonance and other effects, and how to describe what they do without reducing sound to a checklist.

Detailed Definition
Pause in poetry refers to a deliberate break or stop within a line (caesura) or between lines that modifies rhythm, pacing, or emphasis; pauses may be indicated by punctuation such as commas, dashes, or periods, or left implicit through spacing and phrasing. Skillful use of pause allows poets to control mood, suspense, dramatic intensity, or natural speech flow, much like silent beats in music give shape to melody.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pause: In Shakespeare’s “To be, or not to be—[pause]—that is the question,” caesura creates dramatic tension; Emily Dickinson’s dashes (“I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—”) mark syntactic and breath pauses; T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” uses ellipses for hesitant thought; contemporary poet Claudia Rankine uses line breaks as pauses to emphasize racial microaggressions; pauses control rhythm, emphasis, and emotional pacing; they may be marked by punctuation, lineation, or white space.
Additional Notes
Metrical/rhetorical rest in line. Fundamental concept. Includes caesura. Study tip: Feel the breathing spaces; pauses shape rhythm and meaning throughout all verse.
Other Meanings of “Pause”
Also Known As
Caesura Stop Rest Break Caesural pause Fermata lapse surcease Silence
Skip to main content