Home › Glossary › Letter S

sematic imagery

Imagery
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

Imagery that conveys meaning through symbolic signs or indicative representations

Detailed Definition
Sematic imagery (likely a typographical variant of “semantic imagery”) refers to poetic images that carry layered or culturally coded meanings beyond their literal depiction, functioning as symbols or metaphors that resonate with thematic significance; such imagery enriches interpretation by activating associative networks in the reader’s mind.
Example
Example in poetry:
“The sky wept silver tears” blends visual and tactile sematic imagery; In “Ode to a Nightingale,” Keats’s “tender is the night-air” merges temperature and emotion; Emily Dickinson’s “purple Host” evokes color and military metaphor simultaneously; Wallace Stevens’s “blackbirds” carry visual, auditory, and symbolic sematic imagery
Additional Notes
sematic imagery: A misspelling of semantic imagery; imagery where the meaning is derived from the intellectual or conceptual associations of the words rather than purely sensory or visual description.
Also Known As
Semantic imagery imagery of meaning sense-imagery Aposematic imagery
Skip to main content