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pent

Archaic Terms
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

Confined, enclosed, or shut in tightly; often paired with "up" to convey trapped emotions or physical restraint in verse.

Detailed Definition
In older or literary English, pent means confined or shut in. Here it describes the fly crushed and trapped between the pages of the book, emphasizing its helplessness and the tightness of its enclosure.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Has crush’d thee here between these pages pent,” uses pent to mean confined or shut in; Shakespeare’s “pent-up” anger similarly suggests pressure held inside; “The pent river worried at its dam,” gives the archaic word a physical force; “Pent in the flat, we counted sirens,” adapts the term to urban isolation
Additional Notes
The word 'pent' in the quoted line is a literary/archaic term for being confined, which many modern readers may not know.; Found in the poem, On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book by Charles Tennyson Turner
Also Known As
confined restrained pent-up bottled
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