Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Verse written in lines of five metrical feet.
- noun A single line of such verse.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In ancient prosody, a verse differing from the dactylic hexameter by suppression of the second half of the third and of the sixth foot; a dactylic dipenthemimeres or combination of two catalectic dactylic tripodies, thus:
- noun The first half of the line ended almost without exception in a complete word and often with a pause in the sense. Spondees were excluded from the second half-line. The halves of the line often terminated in words of similar ending and emphasis, generally a noun and its attributive. This meter received its name from a false analysis of some ancient metricians, who explained it as consisting of two dactyls, a spondee, and two anapests.
- Having five metrical feet: as, a pentameter verse.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Having five metrical feet.
- noun (Gr. & L.Pros.) A verse of five feet.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun poetry A
line in apoem havingfive metrical feet . - noun poetry
Poetic metre in which eachline hasfive feet .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a verse line having five metrical feet
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Actually, the prevailing wisdom that iambic pentameter is somehow ideal for relating the rhythms of English speech seems deeply flawed to me.
Dipodic Verse : A.E. Stallings : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007
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The poem's iambic pentameter is frequently excellent: occasionally perfect regularity becomes a musical metaphor for stateliness, as in line 2.
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Iambs can begin four-beat lines or so-called pentameter lines, which are really six-beat lines.
THE ANTHOLOGIST Nicholson Baker 2009
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Iambs can begin four-beat lines or so-called pentameter lines, which are really six-beat lines.
THE ANTHOLOGIST Nicholson Baker 2009
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When written in [[English]], both types are in iambic pentameter, that is each line is of five beats (iambs), with the stress on the second syllable in each two-syllable beat.
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English, both types are in iambic pentameter, that is each line is of five beats (iambs), with the stress on the second syllable in each two-syllable beat.
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When written in [[English]], both types are in iambic pentameter, that is each line is of five beats (iambs), with the stress on the second syllable in each two-syllable beat.
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Shakespeare often wrote in iambic pentameter, meaning five iambic "feet" per line, each "foot" being a soft-hard syllable pair … da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM.
chicagotribune.com - 2010
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The word "pentameter" indicates that a line has five of these "feet".
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By "pentameter" is meant that the line has five feet or measures; by "iambic," that each foot contains two syllables, the first short or unaccented, the second long or accented.] which dominated the fashion of English poetry for the next century.
Outlines of English and American Literature : an Introduction to the Chief Writers of England and America, to the Books They Wrote, and to the Times in Which They Lived William Joseph Long 1909
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