Library: Poetry by Credo Reference: Meter, Structure, & Grammar

Metrical Terms

Accent: Topic Page
In speech, emphasis given a particular sound, called prosodic systems in linguistics. There are three basic accentual methods: stress, tone, and length.
Anapest
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
In the quantitative meters of Classical poetry, a metrical foot of two short syllables followed by one long (˘ ˘ –, e.g. dĕĭtās), or, in verse-systems based on accent, two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed (x x /, e.g. interrupt).
Caesura
From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A term that derives from the Lat. verb caedere, "to cut off," and refers to the place in a line of verse where the metrical flow is temporarily "cut off." When this "cut" occurs at the beginning of a line, it is called an "initial caesura"; when it occurs in the middle of a line, it is called a "medial caesura"; and when it occurs at the end of a line, it is called a "terminal caesura.
Dactyl
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
In Cl. prosody, a metrical foot consisting of one long syllable followed by two short ones.
Iambic
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The chief meter in most cl. and mod. prosody. Iambic meter is based on the iamb, a metrical foot consisting of a short or unstressed syllable followed by a long or stressed syllable. In Lat. poetry, the iamb was comprised of this short and long syllable pair; in Gr. it was a metron consisting of this plus a preceding anceps and long syllable
Meter
From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature
From the Greek word meaning `measure'. In poetry, metre is the measure of the rhythm of a line of verse, when the line is rhythmically systematic, ie can be divided into units of `metrical feet'.
Pentameter
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
in prosody, a line to be scanned in five feet (see versification). The third line of Thomas Nashe's "Spring" is in pentameter: "Cold doth / not sting, / the pret / ty birds / do sing."
Scansion
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The act of discovery or interp. of the meter (q.v.) of a poem as realized in one of its lines; also the graphic transcription thereof, usually by symbols, numbers, or letters either above the line or alone. S. is a notation system for meter in metrical poetry just as sheet music notates music or writing notates speech.
Spondee
From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature
In ancient Greek and Latin poetry, a unit of verse measure composed of two long syllables (´ ´); in English verse, two accented syllables.
Trochaic
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A term used for both metrical units and whole meters having the rhythm “marked—unmarked” in series. In the modern accentual meters, a trochee is a foot (q.v.) comprising a stressed syllable followed by a unstressed.

Poetic Structure

Couplet
From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature
A pair of rhymed lines of verse of equal length. The commonest form is the so-called heroic couplet of 10 syllables and five stresses in each line.
Distich
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A pair of metrical lines, a couplet (q.v.), heterometric in Cl. poetry but usually isometric in modern. In Cl. poetry the most common type is the elegiac d. (q.v.), consisting of a dactylic hexameter followed by a dactylic “pentameter” and often used for epigram.
Epigram: Topic Page
Short, witty, and pithy saying or short poem. The poem form was common among writers of ancient Rome, including Catullus and Martial. The epigram has been used by English poets Ben Jonson, John Donne, and Alexander Pope, Irish writers Jonathan Swift and W B Yeats, and US writer Ogden Nash.
Octave
From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A stanza of eight lines. Octaves appear as isolable stanzas, such as the It. *ottava rima (rhyming abababcc) and the Fr. *ballade (ababbcbc), as well as the single octave in Fr. called the *huitain and the single ballade stanza in Eng. called the monk's tale stanza after Chaucer's usage.
Ottava rima
From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature An Italian stanza of 8 lines rhyming a b a b a b c c. It was used by Boccaccio in the 14th century. Pulci in the 15th century used it for the mock-heroic, ironic style with which the stanza is chiefly associated in English through Byron's Don Juan and his Vision of Judgement
Quatrain
From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A stanza of 4 lines, normally rhymed. The q. is, with its many variations, the most common stanza form in European poetry, and very probably in the world. It is for the establishment, in the 3rd c. a.d., of the q. as the meter of the hymn.
Sestet
From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The minor division or last 6 lines of a sonnet preceded by an octave. Sometimes the octave states a proposition or situation and the s. a conclusion, but no fast rules for content can be formulated.
Tercet
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A verse unit of 3 lines, usually rhymed, most often employed as a stanzaic form. It was first developed systematically in Italian poetry (tertian).
Terza rima
From The Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics It. verse form consisting of interlinked tercets, in which the second line of each tercet rhymes with the first and third lines of the one following, aba bcb cdc, etc. The sequence of tercets formed in this way may be of any length and is usually brought to a conclusion by a single final line, which rhymes with the second line of the tercet preceding it, aba a.

Poetic Grammar

Acrostic
From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Verse in which the first letters of each line read downwards to form a word. If the middle letters do likewise, it is a triple acrostic.
Alliteration
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
In poetry and prose, the use, within a line or phrase, of words beginning with the same sound, as in Two tired toads trotting to Tewkesbury. It was a common device in Old English literature, and its use survives in many traditional phrases, such as dead as a doornail and pretty as a picture.
Anaphora
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or lines.
Aphaeresis
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
In prosody the technical term for one form of elision, namely omission of a word-initial syllable, esp. a vowel, e.g. ’gainst for against, mid for amid, ’neath for beneath. Often the following consonant then clusters with the succeeding word, e.g. ’tis for it is, ’twere for it were.
Apocope
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
In prosody the technical term for one form of elision, namely loss of a word-final syllable or vowel, e.g. eve or even for evening. Often the apocopated word then fuses with the one following, e.g. “th’Empyrean” for “the Empyrean,” “th’army,” etc., thereby avoiding hiatus.
Assonance
From Dictionary of Shakespeare
The repetition of vowel sounds within a sequence of words (but not the rhyming sounds repeated at the end of lines of verse).
Catachresis
From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
he tidiest definition of this trope dates back, it has been argued, to the Stoic grammarians: catachresis is the use of a borrowed word for something that does not have a name of its own. We speak thus of the "legs" of a table or the "foot" of a bed.
Consonance
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
In addition to its general meaning of harmony (agreement), c. has been used interchangeably in prosody with a wide variety of terms intended to designate certain phonic echoes.
Enjambment
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Non-alignment of (end of) metrical frame and syntactic period at line-end: the overflow into the following poetic line of a syntactic phrase (with its intonational contour) begun in the preceding line without a major juncture or pause.
Euphony
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The quality of having pleasant, easily pronounced, or smooth-flowing sounds, free from harshness; the pleasing effect of such sounds; the opposite of cacophony.
Figuration
From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The transmutation of ideas into images, is the product of the formative power of human cognition and is realized in all the ways in which verbal, mental, perceptual, optical, and graphic images interact.
Half-rhyme
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
In verse, a rhyme in which the consonant sounds are similar but not the vowel sounds.
Internal rhyme
From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Refers to the Eng. cover term for a variety of rhymes that occur not at the end of the line but within the line. Internal rhyme, therefore, shifts emphasis away from line endings and often away from the interplay between lines to the interplay between words.
Metonymy
From Encyclopedia of Postmodernism
Metonymy, or literally, “change of name,” is a metaphoric substitution of the name of a thing for some attribute of it; as a rhetorical trope, the change of effect for cause, cause for effect, proper name for one of its qualities, or one of the qualities of a thing for its proper name.
Mimesis
From Encyclopedia of Postmodernism
Generally, mimesis is the art of imitation; in rhetoric and poetics, it usually refers to the modes of discourse which have the imitation of nature, including human nature, as their central aim.
Onomatopoeia
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Figure of speech that copies natural sounds. For example, the word ‘cuckoo’ imitates the sound that the cuckoo makes. MORE
Portmanteau
From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
A portmanteau is a type of leather travelling bag for clothes which opens out flat into two parts. A ‘portmanteau word’ is thus a word made up of two others, and expressive of a combination denoted by those parts.
Prosody
From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Study of the elements of language, especially metre, that contribute to rhythmic and acoustic effects in poetry.
Synecdoche
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Figure of speech that uses either the part to represent the whole (‘There were some new faces at the meeting’, rather than new people), or the whole to stand for the part (‘The West Indies beat England at cricket’, using the country to stand for the national teams in question).