Home › Glossary › Letter S

Strophe

Prosody
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

A structural division in odes or songs, consisting of metrically consistent lines that form the poem's rhythmic building block.

Detailed Definition
The strophe is a metrical unit in lyric poetry, repeating patterns to organize thought in classical odes like Pindar's. It provides symmetry for thematic development; significant for architecture, it appears in choral works to evoke progression—balancing unity and variation, it enhances musicality, allowing poets to layer meaning through recurrent sound, central to prosody's formal elegance.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Pindar's Pythian Odes, strophe units repeat metrics for victory celebration; Shelley’s "Ode to the West Wind" structures strophes for revolutionary build; Learner: "Winds rise high / Leaves dance by / Storms approach nigh" as strophe; In anacreontics, strophes frame symposia themes; For odes, compose matching strophes and antistrophes.|In Horace's carmina, strophes organize ethical reflections; Practice strophic symmetry.
Additional Notes
Strophe organizes odes metrically, foundational for Pindaric analysis, linked to antistrophe; Shelley builds revolutionary arcs; scholarly: choral origins; usage tip: match strophes in composition for symmetry, illustrating prosody's structural role in thematic progression.
Also Known As
stanzaic unit turn in ode Stanza
Skip to main content