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tarry

Archaic Terms
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

To delay or linger; to stay longer than intended—suggesting reluctance, contemplation, or romantic hesitation.

Detailed Definition
“Tarry” implies reluctant or pleasurable delay—tarrying at feast, tarrying with love. In poetry, it frames moments of suspension. The term’s softness suits lyrical hesitation. Poets use it to explore how waiting shapes desire or fate, where tarrying risks or enriches, reinforcing themes of time, choice, and the poetics of pause in narrative and meditative contexts.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Tarry not, for night approaches,” urges the watchman; In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “I must be gone and live, or stay and die”; “She tarried by the well, waiting”; “Tarry with me through the storm”; “The ship tarried in the harbor”; Tarry not in doubt—act.
Additional Notes
“Tarry” suggests lingering with emotional weight—lovers tarry at parting, souls tarry before death; in pastoral or elegiac modes, it frames delay as both tender and tragic, resisting inevitable separation or fate.
Also Known As
delay linger wait
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