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Witchbroom

Folklore
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

A broom used by witches for flight or ritual cleansing, often made from specific woods, bound with silver or hair.

Detailed Definition
Witchbroom in poetry represents the mundane made magical—the broom as wand, the hearth as altar. It appears in feminist verse as the tool of domestic power—where sweeping is not cleaning, but consecrating, and flight begins with a single stroke.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Macbeth, the witch’s broom is the staff of flight: “I come, Graymalkin!”; in Burns’ “Tam o’ Shanter,” the witch rides the broom through the storm; in Yeats’ “The Celtic Twilight,” the broom is the broomstick of the moon’s ride; in Blake’s “The Mental Traveller,” the broom sweeps the path of the soul; in Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died,” the broom is the silence that sweeps the room; in Sylvia Plath’s “The Bee Meeting,” the broom is the tool that clears the hive’s dead.
Additional Notes
Witchbroom is a broom used by witches for flight or ritual cleansing, often made from specific woods, bound with silver or hair. In folklore, it sweeps away evil and carries the witch between worlds. In poetry, it symbolizes purification, transition, and the domestic turned magical. Poets use it to explore the sacredness of cleaning, the act of sweeping away the past, and the quiet power of ritual.
Also Known As
Broomstick Witch’s Broom
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