Home › Glossary › Letter T

Turbulent

Mood
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 mood marked by inner turmoil, social unrest, or chaotic emotion, conveyed through dissonant diction, irregular rhythm, or conflicting imagery in a poem.

Detailed Definition
Turbulent mood in poetry conveys inner or outer chaos through jagged rhythm, violent imagery, and dissonant diction; it appears in war verse, psychological breakdowns, or storm poems—like Ginsberg or Plath—where the speaker’s world is in flux, using linguistic instability to mirror the raw, uncontrolled forces of passion, trauma, or societal collapse.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the speaker’s mind is turbulent with anxiety; In “The Second Coming,” Yeats’ “blood-dimmed tide” evokes turbulent chaos; Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” channels turbulent rage through violent metaphors; Emily Dickinson’s “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” conveys turbulent mental collapse; In “Howl,” Ginsberg’s frantic catalogues express turbulent societal collapse; In “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot’s shifting voices create turbulent modern disarray.
Additional Notes
Turbulent mood conveys chaotic emotional or physical upheaval; rendered through irregular meter, violent imagery, and dissonant sounds—e.g., storm or revolution poems; related to frenzied, agitated, and restless moods; useful for depicting inner or societal crisis.
Also Known As
Chaotic Stormy Agitated Restless Unstable tempestuous turbid unquiet
Skip to main content