In verse, many meters use a foot as the basic unit in their description of the underlying rhythm of a poem. Both the quantitative meter of Classical poetry and the Accentual-Syllabic meter of most poetry in English use the foot as the fundamental building block. A foot consists of a certain number of syllables forming part of a line of verse. A foot is described by the character and number of syllables it contains: in English, feet are named for the combination of accented and unaccented syllables; in other languages such as Latin and Greek, the duration of the syllable (long or short) is measured. Verse is a writing that uses meter as its primary organisational mode, as opposed to prose, which uses grammatical and discoursal units like sentences and paragraphs. ... Meter (British English spelling: metre) describes the linguistic sound patterns of a verse. ... A scale for measuring mass A quantitative property is one that exists in a range of magnitudes, and can therefore be measured. ... Accentual-Syllabic Verse is an extension of Accentual verse which fixes both the number of stresses and syllables within a line or stanza. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...

When scanning a line of verse, a poet looks at feet as the basic rhythmic unit rather than words. A foot can consist of multiple words and a single word can contain many feet; furthermore, a foot can and often does bridge multiple words, containing, for example, the last two syllables of one word and the first of the next. To scan for feet, one should focus on the stream of sound alone and forget that words exist at all.

The poetic feet in classical meter

Below are listed the names given to the poetic feet by classical metrics. The feet are classified first by the number of syllables in the foot (disyllables have two, trisyllables three, and tetrasyllables four) and secondarily by the pattern of vowel lengths (in classical languages) or syllable stresses (in English poetry) which they comprise.

The following lists describe the feet in terms of vowel length (as in classical languages). Translated into syllable stresses (as in English poetry), 'long' becomes 'stressed' ('accented'), and 'short' becomes 'unstressed' ('unaccented'). For example, an iamb, which is short-long in classical meter, becomes unstressed-stressed, as in the English word "betray." An iamb is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. ...

The most common in English verse are the iamb, the trochee, the dactyl, and the anapest. An iamb is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. ... A trochee is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ... A dactyl (Gr. ... An anapaest is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ...

Disyllables

• pyrrhus or dibrach: short-short
• iamb: short-long
• trochee or choree: long-short
• spondee: long-long

A pyrrhic is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ... An iamb is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. ... A trochee is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ... In poetry, a spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables. ...

Trisyllables

• tribrach: short-short-short
• anapest or antidactylus: short-short-long
• amphibrach: short-long-short

A tribrach is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ... An anapaest is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ... An amphibrac is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ...

Tetrasyllables

• tetrabrach or proceleusmatic: short-short-short-short
• quartus paeon: short-short-short-long
• tertius paeon: short-short-long-short
• minor ionic, or double iamb: short-short-long-long
• secundus paeon: short-long-short-short
• diamb: short-long-short-long
• antispast: short-long-long-short
• first epitrite: short-long-long-long
• primus paeon: long-short-short-short
• choriamb: long-short-short-long
• ditrochee: long-short-long-short
• second epitrite: long-short-long-long
• major ionic: long-long-short-short
• third epitrite: long-long-short-long
• fourth epitrite: long-long-long-short
• dispondee: long-long-long-long