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Scar

Landscape
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 steep bare rock face or cliff, especially in northern English landscapes. It often rises abruptly above pasture or dale.

Detailed Definition
A scar is a prominent escarpment or limestone cliff, frequently appearing as a pale, broken wall above fields or valleys. Poets can use its stark exposure to contrast with softer grass, livestock, and streams below. Its ledges may hold birds, sparse flowers, or old nests, adding precarious life to the stone. Because the word also suggests a wound, a landscape scar can carry emotional resonance, making visible the marks left by pressure, weather, and time.
Example
Example in poetry:
The quarry was a scar in the hill, exposing pale stone beneath the grass; A scar can be a literal mark on land and a metaphor for violence, mining, war, or memory; The road cut a scar across the moor, and the speaker compares it to an old wound that will not close; In Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Binsey Poplars,” felled trees leave a damaged landscape, showing how human action can scar a place
Additional Notes
In northern English landscape vocabulary, a scar is a steep exposed face or outcrop of rock, particularly familiar in the Pennines and limestone country. The word appears frequently in place names and regional writing, where recognising its geographical meaning prevents confusion with the bodily scar. Poets may deliberately exploit both senses, making damaged or exposed landscape resemble wounded flesh. Texture, erosion, height, and barrenness are often significant. Compare crag, cliff, escarpment, scree, limestone pavement, fell, outcrop, precipice, geological imagery, and landscape personification.
Also Known As
Scarp Escarpment Cliff
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