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Below listed are the names given to the poetic feet by classical metrics. The feet are classified first by the number of syllables in the foot (disyllables have two, trisyllables three, and tetrasyllables four) and secondarily by the pattern of vowel lengths (in classical languages) or syllable stresses (in English poetry) which they comprise.
An anapaest (/ ˈ æ n ə p iː s t,-p ɛ s t /; also spelled anapæst or anapest, also called antidactylus) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry.In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable.
In the dactylic hexameters of Classical Latin and Classical Greek, for example, each of the six feet making up the line was either a dactyl (long-short-short) or a spondee (long-long): a "long syllable" was literally one that took longer to pronounce than a short syllable: specifically, a syllable consisting of a long vowel or diphthong or ...
Resolution is the metrical phenomenon in poetry of replacing a normally long syllable in the meter with two short syllables. It is often found in iambic and trochaic meters, and also in anapestic, dochmiac and sometimes in cretic, bacchiac, and ionic meters. In iambic and trochaic meters, either the first or the second half of the metrical foot ...
Anapestic tetrameter (British spelling: anapaestic) is a poetic meter that has four anapestic metrical feet per line. Each foot has two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. It is sometimes referred to as a "reverse dactyl", and shares the rapid, driving pace of the dactyl. [1] [2] [3] [4]
In accentual verse, often used in English, a dactyl is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables—the opposite is the anapaest (two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable). [2] An example of dactylic meter is the first line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem Evangeline (1847), which is in dactylic hexameter:
The final foot of the second line "move slow" is another spondee replacing an iamb. John Masefield also uses spondees effectively in the line: Dirty British / coaster with a / salt-caked / smoke-stack [8] Here the last four syllables make two spondees, contrasting with the eight short syllables in the first two feet.
A pyrrhic (/ ˈ p ɪr ɪ k /; Greek: πυρρίχιος pyrrichios, from πυρρίχη pyrrichē) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. It consists of two unaccented, short syllables. [1] It is also known as a dibrach.