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thickset

Adjective
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

Densely covered, closely packed, or stocky in build; in descriptive poetry, it characterizes thick vegetation, robust figures, or compact structures, suggesting solidity and impenetrability.

Detailed Definition
In the poem, “thickset” describes an apple tree whose branches are weighed down by fruit. The word emphasizes the tree’s fullness and fertile abundance rather than simply saying that it has many apples.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Boughs are bent with thickset fruit” means fruit growing densely packed together; “Thickset hedges barred the lane” applies the adjective to dense vegetation; “A thickset man stood squarely in the rain” shows its common sense of short, sturdy build; In orchard imagery, thickset emphasizes abundance so great that branches bow under it
Additional Notes
The quoted word “thickset” is a less common descriptive term meaning densely or abundantly covered.; Found in the poem, A Birthday by Christina Rossetti
Also Known As
dense stout compact heavyset
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