Home › Glossary › Letter Y

yearning phrase

Phrase
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 poetic phrase expressing intense, often unfulfilled desire; in poetry, it conveys longing for the lost, the distant, or the impossible, creating an elegiac or romantic tone.

Detailed Definition
Yearning phrases pulse with emotional tension, using conditional verbs, distant imagery, and ache-laden diction; they define the lyric mode, where desire’s persistence—even in absence—becomes the poem’s animating force.
Example
Example in poetry:
Yearning phrase: I long for the dawn you named; I ache for the voice I cannot hear; I reach for the hand that is gone; the yearning phrase is love that outlives loss.
Additional Notes
Yearning phrases express deep, unfulfilled desire: “I long for the dawn you named”; they are tender, persistent, and often tied to memory or loss; use longing verbs (“ache,” “pursue,” “remember”) and temporal distance; avoid cliché—ground in specific absence; related to wistful phrase, fading phrase, and lost phrase; ideal for poems of love, exile, or spiritual longing.
Also Known As
longing phrase yearning expression desiring motif
Skip to main content