A series stressed and unstressed syllables arranged in patterns called feet. Iambic pentameter, for example, is a line with five feet, each of which has one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable, as with this line from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
The primary types of feet are:
- Iambic - unstressed, stressed
- Trochaic - stressed, unstressed
- Anapestic - unstressed, unstressed, stressed
- Dactylic - stressed, unstressed, unstressed
Metrical lines (the number of feet in a line) are named as follows:
- One foot: Monometer
- Two feet: Dimeter
- Three feet: Trimeter
- Four feet: Tetrameter
- Five feet: Pentameter
- Six feet: Hexameter
- Seven feet: Heptameter
- Eight feet: Octameter