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The English word "foot" is a translation of the Latin term pes, plural pedes, which in turn is a translation of the Ancient Greek πούς, pl. πόδες. The Ancient Greek prosodists, who invented this terminology, specified that a foot must have both an arsis and a thesis, [2] that is, a place where the foot was raised ("arsis") and where it ...
A metrical foot (aka poetic foot) is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry. In some metres (such as the iambic trimeter) the lines are divided into double feet, called metra (singular: metron). Monosyllable; Disyllable: metrical foot consisting of 2 syllables.
The pyrrhic is rightfully dismissed. Its existence in either ancient or modern rhythm is purely chimerical, and the insisting on so perplexing a nonentity as a foot of two short syllables, affords, perhaps, the best evidence of the gross irrationality and subservience to authority which characterise our Prosody. [4]
The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in each line. Meter is measured in small groups of syllables called feet. "Iambic" indicates that the type of foot used is the iamb, which in English is composed of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (as in a-BOVE).
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 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 :
Examples of Latin words constituting molossi are audiri, cantabant, virtutem. In English poetry, syllables are usually categorized as being either stressed or unstressed, rather than long or short, and the unambiguous molossus rarely appears, as it is too easily interpreted as two feet (and thus a metrical fault) or as having at least one ...
It is the main foot used in the construction of the limerick, as in "There once was / a girl from / Nantucket." It was also used by the Victorians for narrative poetry, e.g. Samuel Woodworth 's poem "The Old Oaken Bucket" (1817) beginning "How dear to / my heart are / the scenes of / my child hood."