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Guide to Prosody

Terms for Describing Prosody

There are many different ways of describing the spoken cadences of verse. Various
languages and poetic traditions listen for stress, vowel length, syllable count, or some
combination of these three, and poets experiment with all of them. What follows below is an
outline of the basics. The following terms describe the generally agreed-upon system for
approximating, in writing, our speech rhythms. It is a reasonably efficient system, but it's
important to remember that it's not perfect: there are far more subtle variations in speech
rhythms than the simple binary of "stressed" and "unstressed" (or, in quantitative meters,
"long" and "short") can register.

Types of verse:

Quantitative Most common in classical languages, this type of verse counts vowel-length.

Accentual This verse counts stress only.

Syllabic This verse counts syllables only, ignoring stress or vowel length

Accentual-
This is the most common verse in English, and it counts both accents
syllabic (stresses) and syllables.

Some general terms:

rhythm the patterns of stress, vowel-length, and pauses in language. Regularly
repeating rhythm is called  meter.

meter a regularly repeating rhythm, divided for convenience into  feet. Meter
describes an underlying framework; actual poems rarely sustain the perfect
regularity that the meter would imply (see  variation).

scansion the identification and analysis of poetic rhythm and meter. To "scan" a line of
poetry is to mark its stressed and unstressed syllables.

variation brief deviation from the metrical framework.  Counterpoint, modulation,

tension, syncopation,  and  interplay  are all terms for describing the
interaction between the pattern of stress the meter prescribes and the actual
pattern we hear: this interaction is the source of most prosodic pleasure, and
is the primary motivation for the practice of scansion.

substitution the substitution of one foot for another. This is a more specific way of
describing variation.

reversed a foot whose pattern of stresses and unstressed syllables is exactly opposite
foot that of the original: e.g. an anapest is the reverse of a dactyl. If a poem
substitutes a troche for an iamb in the first foot of a line, that line is said to
have a reversed initial foot.

initial occurring at the beginning of the line, e.g. initial rhyme is the rhyming of the
lines' first words.  Medial  describes the middle of a line, and  terminalthe end
of the line.

Stanzas 
Terms that describe the number of lines in a stanza.  Note: a stanza need not have lines of
uniform length or rhythm. Click  here  for a glossary of common poetic forms.

A two-line stanza is called a  couplet.

Three   tercet

Four   quatrain

Five lines   cinquain

Six   sixain  or a  sestet

Seven   heptameter

Eight   octave
Lines 
Terms that describe the number of feet in a line.  Note: while most meters are composed in
just one kind of foot per line, poets frequently vary the prescribed rhythm. For English
prosody, a good rule of thumb is to count the number of beats (stresses) per line.

One is
monometer  (pronounced "mo-NAW-muh-ter")
foot called

Two   dimeter  (pronounced "DI-muh-ter")

Three   trimeter  (pronounced "TRIM-uh-ter")

Four   tetrameter  (pronounced "te-TRA-muh-ter")

pentameter  (pronounced "pent-AH-muh-ter";blank verse  is a common type

Five  
of pentameter.)

hexameter  (pronounced "hex-AH-muh-ter";alexandrines  are a common type

Six  
of hexameter).

heptameter  (pronounced "hept-AH-muh-ter";fourteeners  are a common type

Seven  
of heptameter)..

Eight   octometer  (pronounced "oct-AW-muh-ter")

Nine   nonometer  (pronounced "non-NAW-muh-ter")

Feet 
Terms that describe the number of syllables and pattern of stresses (or vowel length) in a
foot.
iamb an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (or, in
quantitative verse, a short vowel followed by a long vowel). Verse
˘ ´ composed of iambs is  iambic.

  "about" is an example of a natural iamb.

trochee a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Verse in

´ ˘ troches is  trochaic.

  "pattern" is a natural troche.

anapest two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. Verse in

˘ ˘ ´ anapests is  anapestic.

  "understand" is a natural anapest.

dactyl a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. (A trick for

remembering this is that "dactyl" comes from the Greek word for
finger, and your finger has a long joint followed by two shorter
´ ˘ ˘ joints.) Verse in dactyls is  dactylic.

  "credible" is a natural dactyl.

spondee ´ ´ two stressed syllables. Verse in spondees is  spondaic.

  "no way!" is a natural spondee.

pyrrhic ˘ ˘ two unstressed syllables. Verse in pyrrhics is  pyrrhic

  "mm-hm" is a natural pyrrhic.

The following feet are found in Greek and Latin verse, but are much more rarely used to
describe English prosody:

amphibrach ˘´˘ antispast ˘´´˘

bacchic ˘´´ choriamb ´˘´

cretic ´˘´ "first" epitrite ˘´´´

"second" epitrite ´˘´´ "third" epitrite ´´˘´  (etc.)

paeon ´˘˘˘ "second" paeon ˘´˘˘  (etc.)

ionic a majore ´´˘˘ ionic a minore ˘˘´´

mollossus ´´´ tribrach ˘˘˘