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acephalous trimeter

Meter
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A three-foot line missing its initial unstressed syllable, typically in iambic or anapestic meter

Detailed Definition
Acephalous trimeter is a metrical line of three feet that lacks its initial syllable (from Greek “akephalos,” meaning “headless”), typically resulting in a truncated or inverted rhythmic pattern that disrupts expected meter for expressive or dramatic effect, commonly found in classical and modernist poetry to signal tension or fragmentation.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Thomas Hardy’s “The Voice,” the line “Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me” begins with a stressed syllable, creating an acephalous trimeter in its rhythmic structure; In A.E. Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young,” “The time you won your town the race” opens with a stress, omitting the initial unstressed syllable typical of iambic trimeter; In some of Emily Dickinson’s hymn-meter poems, lines like “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” begin with a stressed syllable, forming acephalous trimeter; W.B. Yeats occasionally uses acephalous trimeter in “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” for rhythmic variation, as in “And live alone in the bee-loud glade.”
Additional Notes
Acephalous trimeter is a three-foot line missing its initial unstressed syllable (headless), common in trochaic or dactylic meters; it creates rhythmic tension and is often used for emphasis or dramatic effect in lyrical or narrative verse.
Also Known As
Headless trimeter catalectic trimeter acephalous line truncated trimeter Beginning-clipped trimeter Shortened three-foot iambic
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