A rhyme consists of the repetition, in the rhyming words, of the last stressed vowel and of all the speech sounds following that vowel: late-fate; follow-hollow. End rhymes are by far the most frequent type and occur at the end of a verse-line, whereas internal rhymes occur within a verse-line. A rhyme that consists of a single stressed syllable is known as a masculine rhyme: still-hill, bore-more. A rhyme that consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable is a feminine rhyme: ending-bending. A feminine rhyme, since it involves the repetition of two syllables, is also known as a double rhyme and a triple rhyme involves three syllables (comparison-garrison) and usually possesses a comic quality.
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Meter is the recurrence, in regular units, of a prominent feature in the sequence of speech-sounds of a language. There are four main types of meter in European languages:
1) In classical Greek and Latin, the meter was quantitative; that is, it was established by the relative duration of the utterance of a syllable, and consisted of a recurrent pattern of long and short syllables.
2) In French and many other Romance languages, the meter is syllablc, depending on the number of syllables within a line of verse, without regard to the fall of the stresses.
3) In the older Germanic languages, including Old English, the meter is accentual, depending on the number of stressed syllables within a line, without regard to the number of intervening unstressed syllables.
4) The fourth type of meter, combining the features of the two preceding types, is accentual-syllabic, in which the metric units consist of a recurrent pattern of stresses on a recurrent number of syllables. The stress-and-syllable type has been the predominant meter of English poetry since the 14th century.
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In all sustained spoken English we sense a rhythm; that is, a recognisable though varying pattern in the beat of the stresses, or accents, (the more forcefully uttered, hence louder syllables), in the stream of speech-sounds. In meter, this rhythm is structured into a recurrence of regular - that is, approximately equivalent - units of stress pattern. Compositions written in meter are also known as verse (poetry).
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It is possible to distinguish a number of degrees of syllabic stress in English speech, but the most common and generally useful fashion of analysing and classifying the standard English meters is 'binary.' That is, we distinguish only two categories - strong stress and weak stress - and group the syllables into metric feet according to the patterning of these two degrees. A foot is the combination of a strong stress and the associated weak stress or stresses which make up the recurrent metric unit of a line. The relatively stronger-stressed syllable is called, for short, 'stressed'; the relatively weaker-stressed syllables are called 'light,' or most commonly, 'unstressed.' The four standard feet distinguished in English are:
1) Iambic (the noun is 'iamb'): an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
2) Anapestic (the noun is 'anapest'): two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.
3) Trochaic (the noun is 'trochee'): a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable.
4) Dactylic (the noun is 'dactyl'): a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
An iamb is by far the most commonest English foot.
A metric line is named according to the number of feet composing it:
monometer: one foot
dimeter: two feet
trimeter: three feet
tetrameter: four feet
pentameter: five feet
hexameter: six feet (an Alexandrine is a line of six iambic feet)
heptameter: seven feet
1) Iambic (the noun is 'iamb'): an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
2) Anapestic (the noun is 'anapest'): two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.
3) Trochaic (the noun is 'trochee'): a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable.
4) Dactylic (the noun is 'dactyl'): a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
An iamb is by far the most commonest English foot.
A metric line is named according to the number of feet composing it:
monometer: one foot
dimeter: two feet
trimeter: three feet
tetrameter: four feet
pentameter: five feet
hexameter: six feet (an Alexandrine is a line of six iambic feet)
heptameter: seven feet