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Resigned

Mood
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 mood of quiet acceptance toward unavoidable circumstances, conveying passive endurance rather than active resistance or hope.

Detailed Definition
Resigned mood in poetry reflects quiet acquiescence to loss, aging, or inevitability, often conveyed through understated language and steady rhythm; it appears in late-life reflections or stoic elegies—like those of Yeats or Frost—where acceptance replaces struggle, lending dignity to surrender and revealing the grace found in letting go.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold’s speaker is resigned to a world without joy or faith; In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the speaker is resigned to paralysis (“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”); Sylvia Plath’s “Tulips” conveys resigned hospital recovery; Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” describes resigned numbness; In “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot’s characters show resigned spiritual emptiness; Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” contrasts resigned landscape with a bird’s song.
Additional Notes
Resigned mood expresses quiet acceptance of unavoidable fate; signaled by flat tone, understated diction, and closing imagery—e.g., final stanzas of elegies; related to stoic, weary, and subdued moods; differs from despairing in its calm surrender rather than anguish.
Also Known As
Accepting Resignedly calm Stoic Passive Unresisting
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