Home › Glossary › Letter S

subway

Historical And Literary Periods
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

An underground urban railway system; serves in modern urban verse as a symbol of subterranean movement, anonymity, or routine.

Detailed Definition
A subway is a rapid transit train system that usually runs underground. Here it appears in the speakers’ fare money, placing the poem in an urban setting and hinting at everyday city life after the ferry ride.
Example
Example in poetry:
“And we gave her all our money but our subway fares” grounds a poem in urban necessity; Hughes’s city poems often make trains and stations emblems of movement and inequality; “The subway roared beneath our borrowed room” uses the underground railway as soundscape; “At midnight, the subway carried nurses, dreamers, cleaners home” offers a contemporary civic image.
Additional Notes
The word "subway" can be unfamiliar in older poetic contexts because it refers to a city transit system rather than a passageway.; Found in the poem, Recuerdo by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Other Meanings of “subway”
Also Known As
metro underground transit subterranean railway
Skip to main content