Home › Glossary › Letter P

Piggy-wig

Diction
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 whimsical, playful invented name for a pig, notably featured in Edward Lear's classic nonsense poem "The Owl and the Pussy-cat."

Detailed Definition
Piggy-wig is a whimsical, made-up compound used as a character name in the poem. It sounds like nursery language and is meant for comic effect rather than as a standard English word.
Example
Example in poetry:
“And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood” gives a playful, childlike name to a pig; Beatrix Potter’s animal names use similar affectionate diminutives; “Piggy-wig nosed acorns under fern,” keeps the nursery-rhyme diction; In comic verse, such a nickname can make an ordinary animal into a character
Additional Notes
'Piggy-wig' in the quoted line is a playful invented name, not a normal word most readers would know.; Found in the poem, The Owl and the Pussy-cat by Edward Lear
Also Known As
Porker Swine Little Pig Oinker
Skip to main content