Home › Glossary › Letter R

rathe

Adjective
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

Early or prompt; often used to describe something that arrives or occurs sooner than expected.

Detailed Definition
'Rathe' is an archaic term meaning early or prompt, often used in literature to evoke a sense of urgency or precocity. In the poem, the phrase 'A rathe December blights my lagging May' suggests that the speaker feels an early onset of age or decline, contrasting the vitality typically associated with youth in springtime.
Example
Example in poetry:
Rathe is an archaic adjective meaning early, as in Shakespeare’s “a rathe primrose”; “A rathe December blights my lagging May” sharply contrasts early winter with delayed spring; “The rathe train woke the sleepers before dawn” demonstrates the meaning in context; Because the word is rare now, poets use it to create an old-fashioned, compressed musical register
Additional Notes
The word 'rathe' is archaic and not commonly encountered in contemporary usage, which may lead readers to seek its meaning.; Found in the poem, Long time a child, and still a child by Hartley Coleridge
Also Known As
Early Timely Preceding
Skip to main content