Iamb (poetry)

Metrical feet and accents
Disyllables
◡ ◡pyrrhic, dibrach
◡ –iamb
– ◡trochee, choree
– –spondee
Trisyllables
◡ ◡ ◡tribrach
– ◡ ◡dactyl
◡ – ◡amphibrach
◡ ◡ –anapaest, antidactylus
◡ – –bacchius
– ◡ –cretic, amphimacer
– – ◡antibacchius
– – –molossus
See main article for tetrasyllables.

An iamb (/ˈæm/ EYE-am) or iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable (as in καλή (kalḗ) "beautiful (f.)"). This terminology was adopted in the description of accentual-syllabic verse in English, where it refers to a foot comprising an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (as in abóve). Thus a Latin word like íbī, because of its short-long rhythm, is considered by Latin scholars to be an iamb, but because it has a stress on the first syllable, in modern linguistics it is considered to be a trochee.[1]

  1. ^ e.g. Alan Prince (1991) "Quantitative Consequences of Rhythmic Organization". In Michael Ziolkowski et al., eds., Papers from the 26th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, p. 3.