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Son

Kinship
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 male child in relation to a parent. It may evoke lineage, expectation, tenderness, or separation.

Detailed Definition
In poetry, a son may be addressed by a parent, remembered from childhood, or presented as an adult shaped by family history. The term can carry ideas of legacy, naming, resemblance, and the pressure to fulfill inherited roles. Poems about sons often balance intimacy with the awareness that children become independent. A son can also serve as a figure through whom poets consider masculinity, grief, protection, aging, and hope for the future.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break,” the speaker mourns his young brother, showing how a son’s identity exists within a grieving family; A speaker might write, “My son asks why the stars do not fall,” using a child’s question to open wonder; In “The Gift,” Li-Young Lee writes from the perspective of a son remembering his father; A poem can express generational hope with “Son, take this old map and draw the roads we missed”
Additional Notes
Son can suggest lineage and expectation, but also tenderness and separation. Consider whether the poem presents him as an individual or as a carrier of family hopes.
Also Known As
Male Child Boy
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