Home › Glossary › Letter W

Wish

Psychology
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 psychological impulse in poetry reflecting longing for an unattainable object, state, or future, often driving lyrical or narrative desire.

Detailed Definition
Wishes drive longing and imagination. Poetry gives them voice through conditional tense, celestial imagery, or gentle yearning, framing desire as both human limitation and transcendent impulse.
Example
Example in poetry:
In John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” the wish offers escape from mortality; In Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel,” the wish propels transcendent flight; In Emily Dickinson’s “I never saw a Moor,” the wish trusts unseen truths; In W.B. Yeats’ “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” the wish idealizes rural solitude; In Ocean Vuong’s “Notebook Fragments,” the wish reconstructs memory and desire; In Langston Hughes’ “Harlem,” the wish simmers in deferred dreams.
Additional Notes
Wish—desire for something—fuels much lyric poetry (Keats, Hughes); differs from need by its imaginative quality; poetic techniques include conditional syntax, future tense, or metaphor; students should analyze whether wishes are fulfilled, deferred, or transformed; note its link to hope—wish as seed of action.
Also Known As
Desire Longing Craving Yearning
Skip to main content