Poetic meter
Poetic meter is the patterned arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse. It organizes rhythm into recurring units or lines.
Syllable: A unit of spoken language organized around a vowel sound, with optional consonants around it. Syllables are the countable sound units arranged into metrical patterns.
Scansion: The analysis of a poem's metrical pattern by marking syllables, stresses, and feet. Scansion is the practical method for identifying meter in a line.
Iambic pentameter: A poetic meter built around five iambic feet per line, with frequent variation in practice. It is a defining line pattern in much English drama and poetry.
Free verse: Poetry that does not follow a regular, repeated metrical scheme. Free verse can be rhythmic without organizing lines around a recurring meter.
Lexical stress: The relative prominence given to one syllable over others within a word. Word-level stress supplies much of the prominence that meter organizes.
Metrical substitution: A deliberate or conventional change from an expected metrical foot within a line. Substitutions show how a line can depart from its prevailing pattern.
Alexandrine: A twelve-syllable verse line, often divided into two six-syllable halves, prominent in French poetry. It shows how a national verse tradition gives a line its characteristic length and division.
Accentual verse: Verse organized chiefly by the number of stressed syllables in each line, regardless of total syllable count. It contrasts with meters that constrain the sequence or number of syllables.
Metrical foot: A recurring grouping of stressed and unstressed syllables used to describe poetic rhythm. Feet name the smaller recurring patterns that combine into metrical lines.
Prominence (linguistics): The perceptual emphasis of a speech unit through features such as stress, pitch, duration, or loudness. Prominence helps explain why performed stresses do not always match a simple syllable grid.