Home › Glossary › Letter P

Progressive tercet

Form
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 three-line stanza in which each successive line develops an idea, image, or emotion, creating cumulative or evolving meaning.

Detailed Definition
Progressive tercet is a three-line stanza in which each line advances the thought, image, or emotion beyond the previous one, forming a mini-narrative or conceptual arc that contributes to the poem’s cumulative development.
Example
Example in poetry:
Dante’s tercets in “Inferno” progress through Hell’s circles; Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” uses tercets that escalate in emotional intensity; Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” builds perception through successive tercets; Glück’s “The Wild Iris” uses tercets to trace spiritual emergence.
Additional Notes
Progressive tercet is a three-line stanza that advances the poem’s narrative, emotional, or imagistic development; each tercet should feel like a step forward—common in Dante and modern sequences.
Also Known As
Advancing tercet unfolding triplet sequential three-liner narrative terza Incremental tercet
Skip to main content