Home › Glossary › Letter C

Choriamb

Meter
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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 metrical foot of four syllables: long-short-short-long (– ˘ ˘ –), common in Greek choral poetry

Detailed Definition
The choriamb (– ˘ ˘ –) is a classical foot named for its use in choral odes, combining a trochee and an iamb into a symmetrical, rocking rhythm; its balanced structure evokes solemnity or ceremonial tone, and though infrequent in English, it appears in Pindaric odes or Victorian imitations seeking archaic grandeur or liturgical cadence.
Example
Example in poetry:
A Choriamb is a metrical foot with the pattern long-short-short-long (— ∪ ∪ —), as in the line: “Over the sea to Skye,” where “Over the sea” approximates the rhythm (stressed-unstressed-unstressed-stressed).

Choriambic meter (– u u –) appears in Pindar’s victory odes: “Golden lyre, you rule Apollo’s choir”; Horace uses choriambic dimeters in Odes 1.24: “Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus”; In English, Tennyson’s “Boadicea” echoes choriambic grandeur: “Came a day when the cloud was lifted”; The choriamb often forms the core of Aeolic verse like the Sapphic stanza; Swinburne’s “Atalanta in Calydon” employs choriambic rhythms for solemnity; Choriambic lines convey stately, processional movement suitable for hymns.
Additional Notes
Four-syllable metrical foot combining trochee and iamb (long-short-short-long), creating complex rocking rhythm. Rare in English due to stress-based prosody. Common in Greek and Latin quantitative verse.

Choriambic: A foot of four syllables with the pattern long–short–short–long (– u u –), central to Aeolic meters like the Sapphic stanza; it combines trochaic and iambic motion, creating a wave-like rhythm; recognizing choriambic structure is key to analyzing lyric poetry’s musicality.
Also Known As
Double-short foot long-short-short-long choriambic foot ¯˘˘¯ meter Choriambic
Skip to main content