Home › Glossary › Letter S

Self-evident

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

Describing something immediately apparent as true without need of proof.

Detailed Definition
Self-evident in poetry describes lines or images whose meaning is immediately clear and requires no interpretive effort, often due to concrete diction, logical syntax, or universal reference; while valued for accessibility, excessive self-evidence may lack ambiguity or depth prized in more complex lyric traditions.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Fire burns” is a self-evident statement often used in minimalist poetry; In haiku, “Snow falls on snow” conveys self-evident natural truth; William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just To Say” presents self-evident actions (“I have eaten / the plums”); A self-evident line like “Night follows day” needs no explanation in poetic context
Additional Notes
Self-evident: A claim, truth, or observation presented in a poem that is considered obvious or requiring no proof; often used by poets to establish a foundational premise or universal human experience.
Also Known As
Obvious apparent axiomatic self-apparent Apodictic
Skip to main content