Home › Glossary › Letter T

tangible lament

Form
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 lament grounded in the loss of something corporeal or materially present

Detailed Definition
A tangible lament expresses grief through physical artifacts, bodily sensations, or observable actions—such as clenched fists, cold rooms, or untouched meals—rather than abstract sorrow; this approach makes mourning immediate and visceral, connecting emotion to the material traces of loss.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman’s lilacs make grief tangible; In “Lycidas,” Milton’s pastoral objects make mourning tangible; In “Funeral Blues,” Auden’s stopped clocks make loss tangible; In “In Memoriam,” Tennyson’s landscape makes sorrow tangible.
Additional Notes
Tangible lament: Mourning depicted through palpable imagery like objects, places, or bodily sensations.
Also Known As
Concrete dirge Palpable lament Material elegy Concrete elegy
Skip to main content