Glossary of Commonly Used Terms

ACCENT: (1) word accent: the naturally stressed element of any word; (2) verse accent: the metrical stress or ictus in a metrical foot.

AEOLIC VERSE: Greek lyric verse forms borrowed by Latin poets; forms include Sapphics, Asclepiadic verse, and Aeolic stanzas (chap. 2, E).

ALEXANDRINE: in French, a twelve-syllable line with caesura following accented syllable 6.

ALLITERATION: the repetition of an initial consonant or vowel. Used as a structural principle in early Germanic verse.

ANACRUSIS: extra-metrical elements preceding an initial foot. Often used in the discussion of Old English. See chap. 4, B.2.1.1.

ARSIS: (1) in Greek, the raising of the foot while marching, thus, the upbeat or light element in a metrical foot; (2) in Latin, the raising of the voice in a metrical foot, thus the downbeat or heavy element in a metrical foot; (3) in Old English metrics, the metrical stress, thus the downbeat. See discussion, chap. 2, B.3.2, note 3.

ASCLEPIADIC VERSE: system of lyric verse types in four-line stanzas used by Horace (chap. 2, E.3; appendix).

ASSONANCE: the repetition of a vowel or vowel group at the end of a line in the formation of stanzas. Used as a structural principle in early French epic verse (chap. 3, E).

BLANK VERSE: generally described as unrhymed iambic pentameter.

BREVIS BREVIANS: in Latin dramatic verse, a normally long vowel is shortened if preceded in the word by a short vowel and preceded or followed by a syllable receiving word accent. Thus benē could be scanned as ˘ ˘; see chapter 2, A.1d.

BREVIS IN LONGO: in Latin scansion, the substitution of a short syllable for a long at the end of a line: such positions are marked >.

BRIDGE: in Latin verse, a metrical position where word-ending is avoided.

CAESURA: (1) a word break that does not correspond with the break between metrical feet; opposed to diaeresis (chap. 2, B.2.2); (2) the regular placement of such a word break in classical verse: in dactylic hexameter, generally in the third foot (chap. 2, D.1.3); (3) A major syntactic and rhythmic break: (a) in classical French Alexandrines, after the sixth position (dividing the line into 6/6); in decasyllables, after the fourth (dividing the line 4/6) (see discussion, chap. 3, B.2); (b) in English verse, often after the fourth or fifth syllable of a ten-syllable line; see discussion, chap. 6, B.

CANTICA: choral sections in Latin drama, often with no repeating metrical element.

CATALEXIS: case where last foot or metron is shorter by a syllable or more. Thus a trochaic tetrameter might consist of four trochaic feet or metra; in catalectic trochaic tetrameter, the last foot would consist only of a single long rather than a long and a short.

CHORIAMB: in quantitative verse, the verse unit _ ˘ ˘ _.

COLON (PL. COLA): in classical metrics, a compositional unit of a single, repeatable metrical phrase (chap. 2, B.1.5); for example, the hemiepes (half-line) of the pentameter of an elegiac couplet (chap. 2, D.2), or the glyconic in Aeolic verse (chap. 2, E).

COUPE: break. Originally used in treatises on French verse as the equivalent of caesura. Now used particularly of Alexandrine verse to refer to breaks between syntactic units of particular lines (chap. 3, D).

DACTYLIC HEXAMETER: in quantitative verse, a line of six dactylic feet with conventional substitutions permitted (chap. 2, D.1; appendix).

DECASYLLABLE: ten-syllable line.

DIAERESIS: (1) in classical hexameter, a break whereby word break corresponds to foot break (chap. 2, B.2.2); (2) in linguistics, the pronunciation of two adjacent vowels as two syllables rather than a diphthong (chap. 3, A.3.2.1).

DIPHTHONG: a combination of two or more vowels that is prosodically understood as a single syllable.

DISTICH: two-line unit in verse.

ELEGIAC COUPLET: in Latin, a couplet consisting of a dactylic hexameter followed by a pentameter (chap. 2, D.2 and appendix; English imitations, chap. 6, A.3).

ELISION: in verse, the metrical dropping of a final syllable ending with a vowel (or certain vowel-consonant combinations) when followed by a word with initial vowel (chap. 2, A.2.1; chap. 3, A.6)

ENJAMBMENT: in French verse, the completion of a syntactic unit in the preceding or following line (chap. 3, D.3).

ENVOY: in medieval French verse, the concluding stanza of a ballade, often addressing the poem to a particular listener.

EPIC CAESURA: in French, a caesura following an unaccented syllable whereby that syllable is disregarded in the scansion (chap. 3, C.1.2).

EPODE: (1) a classical form in two-line units employing different verse types or verse bases for each line (chap. 2, G); (2) the third stanza of a three stanza ode, where the first two stanzas have the same form (chap. 5, B.2.2).

GLIEDER (sing. Glied): verse units occasionally used in the description of early Germanic verse; Glieder are the basic units of a foot (chap. 4, B.2.1).

GLYGONIC: verse form x x _ ˘ ˘ _ ˘ _ (chap. 2, B.1.5; E.1).

HEMIEPES: the half line unit forming the second line of an elegiac couplet (chap. 2, D.2).

HEMISTICH: half-line. Generally used of the two six-syllable half-lines forming a classical French Alexandrine (chap. 3, B.2.3).

HENDECASYLLABLE: eleven-syllable line; (1) in Italian, this is a basic form; it is equivalent to the French decasyllable, in that both are defined by a terminal accent on syllable 10 (chap. 3, B.2.2.1); (2) for classical form, see chapter 2, E.1.

HEROIC COUPLET: in standard descriptions of English meter, considered rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter. But see proposed scansion in chapter 6, B.1.

HIATUS: a break between elements subject to elision; see chapter 2, A.2.2 (Latin) and chapter 3, A.6.2 (French).

ICTUS: the so-called “heavy” element of a foot or metron; (1) in quantitative verse, the long syllable of a foot (the first syllable of a dactylic foot, the last of an iambic foot); (2) in English, the stressed syllable of these feet.

ISOSYLLABLISM: in the strictest sense, the principle that lines are defined by the number of syllables only, without regard to quantity or accent.

LOGAOEDIC VERSE: term once used by classicists to describe verse that mixes iambic/trochaic and dactylic elements, or spoken and sung forms. No longer used in most discussions of meter.

LYRIC CAESURA: a caesura following an unaccented syllable where this syllable counts as any other syllable (chap. 3, C.1.3).

MEASURE: sometimes used as analogous to the musical foot (chap. 5, A.2.1); in French, often refers to units of phrasal elements making up a particular line (chap. 3, D.1).

MUTE: type of consonant also called a “stop”; in Western phonetics, three groups: unvoiced (p, t, k); voiced (b, d, g); and aspirate (f, th, h). For the effect on determination of syllable quantity in classical languages, see chapter 2, A.1c(2).

ODE: (1) Horatian: lyric verse, generally in four-line stanzas, in specific imitation of Horace (chap. 2, E.2–4); (2) English or romantic ode: stanzaic verse modelled after odes of Pindar (chap. 5, B.2).

PROSODY: the study of the metrical value of particular words and linguistic elements.

QUATRAIN: four-line unit.

RESOLUTION OR RESOLVED SYLLABLE: the substitution of two short syllables for one long (found in Latin and in early Germanic verse).

RHYME RICHE: rhyme that incorporates one more phonetic element than what is required for “sufficient rhyme” (chap. 3, F.1.1).

RHYTHM: a pattern of repeating elements; rhythm is generally a matter of stylistics but can be discussed on the level of versification as well (chap. 3, D.2; chap. 5, A.2.2).

RONDEAU: French fixed form; see chapter 3, G.3.

SAPPHIC STANZA: four-line lyric form used by Sappho in Greek and imitated by Catullus and Horace in Latin (chap. 2, E.2; English imitations, chap. 6, A.4).

SENARIUS: a line consisting of seven metrical feet; used also to refer specifically to the iambic senarius (chap. 2, F.2; appendix).

SONNET: in English, fourteen-line poem in decasyllables, organized into two quatrains and two tercets (Petrarchan), or three quatrains and concluding couplet (Shakespearean).

SPRUNG RHYTHM: a metrical system invented and presumably followed by Gerard Manley Hopkins (chap. 6, C).

STICHIC VERSE: classical term for any verse type involving repeating elements (such as a distich or stanza).

STYLISTICS: as used in this book, refers to elements of verse that are not part of the organizing or foundational principles of a line.

TERCET: three-line unit.

THESIS: SEE ARSIS.

TONIC ACCENT: in French, the final stressed syllable of any word (chap. 3.A.4).

VERSE: as used here, equivalent to typographical “line.”

VIRELAI: French fixed form; see chapter 3, G.4.