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rick

Archaic Terms
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 large, regularly shaped stack of hay, grain, or straw built in the open air and thatched to protect it from rain.

Detailed Definition
Rick derives from Old Norse "hraukr" and describes the carefully constructed outdoor stacks of stored fodder or grain that were a defining feature of the pre-barn English farm landscape. In poetry ricks appear in harvest and autumnal scenes as monuments to agricultural abundance—their rounded, thatched forms dominating the rural skyline. Thomas Hardy's Wessex novels and poems are particularly rich in rick imagery, grounding his pastoral vision in the specific technologies of nineteenth-century farming. A rick fire—whether accidental or the result of arson by desperate laborers—was a catastrophic event, and ricks therefore also carry associations of vulnerability, class conflict, and the fragility of rural prosperity. The word's compactness makes it useful in verse requiring precise rural detail.
Example
Example in poetry:
Hardy's rural novels and poems are punctuated by rick fires — the catastrophic burning of the stored harvest, whether by accident or the arson of desperate laborers — making the rick both a symbol of agricultural abundance and of its vulnerability; A poet might write "the ricks stood in the September field like a small golden city, each one thatched and trimmed, the year's work made monumental, the sky above them full of the patience before weather"; In the pastoral landscape the rick's rounded, thatched form — the careful architecture of organized abundance — represents the farm at its most visually distinctive and its most economically concentrated; The rick as the visible evidence of a successful harvest — its size measuring the year's yield, its condition reflecting the farmer's skill and care — makes it a natural image for any visible accumulation of effort and achievement; John Clare describes ricks as features of the late summer and autumn landscape with the affectionate precision he brings to all the features of his native Helpston, their familiar forms part of the world he mourned when enclosure transformed it; In poems about the agricultural year, the completion of the rick — the last load thatched, the stack finished — marks the end of harvest and the beginning of winter, the year's work consolidated into the stored form that will sustain animals and people through the cold months.
Additional Notes
Rick is particularly associated with the rural history of southern and eastern England, where the rick-yard — the organized collection of finished stacks — was one of the farm's most visually distinctive and economically significant features. Students should distinguish between different types of rick: hay ricks (rounded, often circular in plan), wheat ricks (typically square or rectangular, sometimes raised on staddle stones to prevent rat access), and straw ricks (the residue after threshing). Each type has a characteristic shape and construction technique, and attentive poets like Hardy describe specific types with technical precision. The rick fire — whether accidental or the result of deliberate arson by desperate laborers during the Swing Riots of the 1830s — was catastrophic: a farm's entire stored wealth could be destroyed in a single night. Students should know about the Swing Riots specifically because rick-burning was the agricultural laborers' most effective form of protest, and Hardy's Wessex fiction engages extensively with the social tensions that produced it. The rick's visual prominence in the pre-industrial landscape — its rounded form dominating the farm's horizon — makes it one of the most immediately recognizable images of traditional harvest. Related terms: mow, thatch, stook, sheave, aftermath.
Other Meanings of “rick”
Also Known As
mow haystack stack hay-rick corn-rick
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