Home › Glossary › Letter H

Hemidemisemiquaver

Foot
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 whimsical or nonce term humorously referring to a very short metrical unit, not a standard poetic foot

Detailed Definition
Hemidemisemiquaver is not a genuine metrical foot but a playful borrowing from musical notation (where it denotes a 128th note), occasionally used in poetic discourse as a humorous or satirical label for an extremely brief rhythmic unit; its appearance in glossaries like this often signals parody or meta-commentary on the complexity of prosody, rather than actual usage in canonical verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
The hemidemisemiquaver is a musical term (1/64 note), not a poetic foot; It has no standard application in prosody; Occasionally referenced metaphorically for extremely rapid syllabic delivery; In experimental poetry, it might describe ultra-fast rhythmic units; Not used in classical or traditional metrics; Poets generally avoid this term in favor of metrical feet like pyrrhic or tribrach.
Additional Notes
Hemidemisemiquaver: A musical term (1/64 note) sometimes borrowed in prosody to describe extremely short rhythmic values, though rarely used in poetic analysis; included here likely as a humorous or analogical reference to minute metrical divisions; students should recognize it as non-standard in classical prosody.
Also Known As
Sixty-fourth note
Skip to main content