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Synesthesia

Device
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 figure of speech in which one sense is described using terms of another

Detailed Definition
Synesthesia is a neurological and literary phenomenon where stimulation of one sense triggers an involuntary response in another (e.g., “blue notes” or “sharp cheese”), used poetically to create rich, cross-sensory imagery that transcends literal description and evokes emotional or spiritual resonance.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Baudelaire’s “Correspondences,” scents become colors and sounds: “Perfumes, colors, and sounds respond to one another”; Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” blends taste, sound, and touch: “Tasting of Flora and the country green, / Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!”; In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Eliot writes “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”—a tactile-auditory synesthetic image; Sylvia Plath’s “Cut” merges visual and tactile: “What a thrill— / My thumb instead of an onion”; Contemporary poet Tracy K. Smith uses synesthesia in “The United States Welcomes You”: “The sky was the color of a bruise you could hear.”
Additional Notes
One sense triggering another (seeing sounds, hearing colors). Creates vivid, cross-sensory imagery. Study Baudelaire, Rimbaud. Effective for heightened perception, altered consciousness themes.
Also Known As
Cross-sensory imagery Sense-mixing Blended perception Multi-sensory figure
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