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Extra-syllable five-foot

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 five-foot pentameter line that contains an extra syllable beyond normal meter.

Detailed Definition
Extra-syllable five-foot refers to a metrical line nominally composed of five poetic feet (e.g., iambic pentameter) but containing one or more additional syllables beyond the expected count—often an unstressed syllable at the end (feminine ending) or mid-line; this subtle expansion preserves the underlying meter while allowing for natural speech inflections, lyrical variation, or expressive emphasis without breaking the rhythmic contract with the reader.
Example
Example in poetry:
An anapestic line with eleven syllables instead of ten, such as “And the sound of a voice that is still” where the extra syllable creates a lingering effect
Additional Notes
An Extra-syllable five-foot line (or hypercatalectic pentameter) is a line that is primarily iambic pentameter (five feet, ten syllables) but includes one or more extra unstressed syllables, often at the end of the line (feminine ending); this variation softens the line's close, and Shakespeare frequently used it in his later plays, linking to the related term extrametrical syllables.
Also Known As
Hypermetrical pentameter Five-foot with extra syllable Surplus-syllable pentameter Anapestic pentameter hypermetric
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