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Short-long-short pentameter

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 pentameter line composed of five consecutive cretic feet (long-short-long or stressed-unstressed-stressed), yielding a distinctive rhythmic pattern.

Detailed Definition
Short-long-short pentameter is a five-foot line built from amphibrachic feet (unstressed-stressed-unstressed); though not standard in English prosody, it appears in experimental or translated verse, offering a lilting, songlike rhythm that contrasts with the more common iambic or trochaic meters and lends itself to lyrical or narrative fluidity.
Example
Example in poetry:
A pentameter line: "She walks in beauty, like the night" (Byron) loosely fits short-long-short x5 with variations; "The moonlight danced upon the waves in silver grace"; "His voice was calm, yet full of hidden, deep despair"; Amphibrachic pentameter in Russian poetry (e.g., Nekrasov) uses this pattern regularly
Additional Notes
Similar to the hexameter, this refers to a five-foot line with a short-long-short rhythm; in accentual-syllabic verse, this could refer to five Amphibrach feet (∪-∪), resulting in an Amphibrachic Pentameter. This meter is rare in English poetry but appears in some dramatic verse.
Also Known As
clipped five-foot choriamb reduced pentameter Amphibrachic pentameter
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