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Recession

Economics
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 period of declining economic activity, with reduced production and employment; in poetry, it can signify scarcity, social suffering, and the fragility of prosperity built on unstable foundations.

Detailed Definition
A recession is a broad downturn marked by reduced production, spending, investment, and employment. Its effects enter poetry through shuttered shops, shortened hours, job searches, unpaid bills, and the silence of factories. A poem may use recession not only as an economic event but as an emotional weather system, showing how public contraction narrows private hopes and forces people to revise what security means.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem set during a recession shows closed shops, empty lunch counters, and workers searching for jobs; In a dramatic monologue, a laid-off parent measures the recession through unpaid heating bills rather than statistics; Langston Hughes’s Depression-era poetry often records economic hardship and deferred hopes, offering useful context for poems about recession; A poet may make the rhythm of short, broken lines mirror the uncertainty of a recession
Additional Notes
A recession often brings lower production, reduced spending, and job losses. Economists track measures such as gross domestic product and unemployment.
Also Known As
Economic Downturn Slump
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