Poetry: meter Flashcards
Accent
The emphasis or stress placed on a beat
Accentual-syllabic
The kind of prosody principally used in English
Anapæst
UUX foot of 3 beats
Beat
A word or syllable bearing one stress (x)or unstress (u)
Cadence
A fall in pitch or tone
Dimeter
A line of two feet
Distinguishing
Said of a foot, typeface, or fount, different from that normally used
Duple
Of a foot, having two beats; the rhythm produced by such feet.
Elision
Omission, as of one or more letters from a word usually indicated by an apostrophe
Falling rhythm
That produced by feet with with unstressed beats following stressed beats
Feminine
Of an ending, with one or more unstressed hypermetrical beats
Foot
A prosodic unit of stressed and/or unstressed beats, the component of a line
Free verse
Poetry in which the meter varies
Heptameter
Line of seven feet
Hexameter
A line of six feet
Hyperbeats
Those beats in a line which are surplus to the meter; stressed & unstressed hyperbeats are known also as masculine & feminine
Hypermetric
Of a line in a given meter, with one or more hyper beats
Iamb
A foot of two beats an u followed by an X
Ictus
The stressed beat of a foot
Inverted
Of a foot, the reverse of that normally used In a given line
Line
A single sequence of characters read from left to right
Line break
The turn of one line into the next notated as /
Masculine
Of an ending with one ore more stressed hyper metrical beats
Metre
The rhythmic pattern of beats
Neoclassical
Derived from Greek or Latin writing
Pentameter
A line of five feet
Prosody
The study and notation of meter
Pyrrhic
A foot of two unstressed beats
Rising rhythm
That produced by feet with stress beats following unstressed beats
Scansion
The individual metrical pattern of a particular line or poem
Spondee
A foot of two stressed beats xx
Stressed
Of a beat, spoken emphatically often with the voice pitched slightly higher than for an unstressed beat
Substitute foot
Any foot used as a replacement for one of the regular feet in a given line; includes inverted and distinguishing feet
Tetrameter
A line of four feet
Trimeter
A line of three feet
Triple
Of a foot; having three beats;
Trochee
A foot of two beats, a stressed followed by an unstressed xu
U
Notation for an unstressed beat
Unstressed
Of a beat, spoken unemphatically, often more rapidly and with the voice pitched slightly lower than a stressed beat
Wrenched accent
Occurs when the requirements of metrical stress or rhyme prevail over natural stress of a word or words.
X
Notation for a stressed beat
