Foot (prosody)
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In verse, a foot is the basic unit of meter used to describe rhythm. A foot consists of a certain number of syllables forming part of a line of verse. A foot is described by the character and number of syllables it contains: in English, feet are named for the combination of accented and unaccented syllables; in other languages such as Latin and Greek, the duration of the syllable (long or short) is measured.
When scanning a line of verse, a poet looks at feet as the basic rhythmic unit rather than words. A foot can consist of multiple words and a single word can contain many feet; furthermore, a foot can and often does bridge multiple words, containing, for example, the last two syllables of one word and the first of the next. To scan for feet, one should focus on the stream of sound alone and forget that words exist at all.
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The poetic feet
Below are listed 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.
Disyllables
- pyrrhus or dibrach: two short syllables
- iamb: Consisting of a short syllable followed by a long one, or of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented; as, an iambic foot.
- trochee or choree: A metrical foot of two syllables, the first long and the second short, as in the Latin word ante, or the first accented and the second unaccented, as in the English word motion; a choreus.
- spondee: A poetic foot of two long syllables
Trisyllables
- tribrach: short-short-short
- anapest: short-short-long
- amphibrach: short-long-short
- bacchius: short-long-long
- dactyl: long-short-short
- amphimacer or cretic: long-short-long
- antibacchius: long-long-short
- molossus: long-long-long
Tetrasyllables
- tetrabrach or proceleusmatic: short-short-short-short
- quartus paeon: short-short-short-long
- tertius paeon: short-short-long-short
- minor ionic, or double iamb: short-short-long-long
- secundus paeon: short-long-short-short
- diamb: short-long-short-long
- antispast: short-long-long-short
- first epitrite: short-long-long-long
- primus paeon: long-short-short-short
- choriamb: long-short-short-long
- ditrochee: long-short-long-short
- second epitrite: long-short-long-long
- major ionic: long-long-short-short
- third epitrite: long-long-short-long
- fourth epitrite: long-long-long-short
- dispondee: long-long-long-long