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Wylls-Neck

Historical Location
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 named height or hill in Wessex, associated in the poem with the speaker’s solitary refuge.

Detailed Definition
Wylls-Neck is one of the elevated places in Hardy’s Wessex landscape. The speaker contrasts it with the lowlands and towns, finding freedom and psychological distance there.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, / Or on Wylls-Neck westwardly” (Housman, “A Shropshire Lad”); Wylls-Neck is a hill in Somerset, England, and the place-name anchors the poem in a specific western landscape; Housman’s regional names turn geography into memory, distance, and belonging; in place-based poetry, unfamiliar names can preserve local history and invite readers to hear the music of a landscape’s language
Additional Notes
The quoted place-name is obscure and may require geographical identification.; Found in the poem, Wessex Heights by Thomas Hardy
Also Known As
neck of the woods locality region area
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