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weirs

Farming
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

Low barriers built across a river to control the water or help catch fish.

Detailed Definition
A weir is a man-made structure in a stream or river that raises or regulates the water level. In the poem, 'weirs' gives the landscape a specific rural, watery setting and helps the line sound rooted in local life.
Example
Example in poetry:
“She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs” comes from Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”; weirs are low barriers built across a river to control or divert water; “Water slipped silver over the old stone weir” emphasizes their stepped flow; “By salmon weirs the reeds leaned down” places the agricultural or fishing structure in landscape poetry
Additional Notes
The word 'weirs' is a specialized landscape term in the quoted line, and many readers may not know it means a water-control barrier.; Found in the poem, An Old Song Resung by William Butler Yeats
Also Known As
dams barriers
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