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sphere

Noun
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

In older cosmology, a heavenly body or the region it occupies; in poetry, it denotes the crystalline spheres, celestial order, and the metaphysical structure of the universe.

Detailed Definition
In Renaissance astronomy, a sphere could mean one of the concentric celestial shells thought to carry the planets and stars. Donne turns that old cosmological idea into a joke by making the lovers’ bed the sun’s new center.
Example
Example in poetry:
“This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere” — John Donne, “The Sun Rising”; sphere here means a bounded world or realm, not only a geometric ball; Donne playfully makes the lovers’ room the center of the universe; Renaissance cosmology imagined celestial spheres enclosing the earth; the word enlarges an intimate bedroom into a cosmic space; compare “sphere” as a person’s social or intellectual domain
Additional Notes
In "these walls, thy sphere," sphere is a specialized cosmological term, not just the common word for a round object.; Found in the poem, The Sun Rising by John Donne
Also Known As
orb globe domain ball
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