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ploughman

Farming
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 person who turns soil for cultivation, symbolizing rural labor, connection to earth, and the cyclical rhythms of agrarian life in pastoral or work poems.

Detailed Definition
A ploughman is an agricultural worker who turns the soil with a plough. The word is common in older rural writing and helps set up the poem's contrast between different kinds of people who follow different signs of time.
Example
Example in poetry:
“The ploughman from the sun his season takes” links farming labor to the yearly cycle; Gray’s “Elegy” honors rural workers such as the ploughman; “A ploughman turned the dark earth after rain,” uses the occupation concretely; Contemporary land poetry may examine the ploughman’s labor alongside machinery and changing ownership
Additional Notes
The quoted line uses an older rural occupation term that many modern readers may not use regularly.; Found in the poem, The lark now leaves his wat'ry nest by Sir William Davenant
Also Known As
farmer tiller agriculturist cultivator
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