Home › Glossary › Letter H

Hemispondee

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 metrical foot consisting of one long (stressed) syllable and one short (unstressed) syllable, often as a variant within spondaic meter

Detailed Definition
Hemispondee is a hybrid foot combining one stressed and one unstressed syllable, functioning as a variant within predominantly spondaic lines or as a substitution in other meters; though not a standard foot in English prosody, it appears in scholarly discussions of classical verse and occasionally in English poetry to mark rhythmic tension or emphasize a single strong beat before resolution.
Example
Example in poetry:
A hemispondee is half a spondee—a single long syllable—used in catalectic positions; In dactylic hexameter, the final syllable may stand as a hemispondee; Greek tragedy uses hemispondees to end lines with weight: “Alas!”; In Latin, Virgil’s “Arma virumque cano” ends with a hemispondee on “cano”; It provides metrical closure without a full foot; Hemispondees often coincide with monosyllabic emphatic words.
Additional Notes
Hemispondee: A half-spondee, typically a single long syllable considered as half of a spondaic foot; appears in discussions of catalectic lines or when analyzing metrical substitution in classical verse; useful for precise scansion of truncated forms.
Also Known As
Hemispondee foot
Skip to main content