Home › Glossary › Letter T

Toe

Anatomy
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

One of the small digits at the end of the foot. In poetry, toes can suggest tentative contact, playfulness, balance, or exposure.

Detailed Definition
Toes are the body's first explorers of sand, water, cold floors, and unfamiliar ground. Their smallness makes them effective in poems of childhood, vulnerability, and quiet domestic detail. A poet may show toes curled with fear, spread for balance, or dipped into a river before the rest of the body follows. Such images can make an abstract hesitation concrete, turning a moment of emotional uncertainty into a subtle gesture at the edge of action.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Marianne Moore's animal poems, exact physical details help make a creature vivid, and toes can serve the same purpose; "The sparrow's toes gripped the wire against the wind" shows action through a small anatomical detail; "She tested the cold floor with one bare toe" captures hesitation and sensation; "The mountain touched the dawn with its stony toes" personifies landscape without losing its shape
Additional Notes
Toes register first contact with ground or water. Their smallness can create playful, tentative, vulnerable imagery.
Also Known As
Digit Pedal Digit
Skip to main content