Home › Glossary › Letter S

short quantity

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 unit in classical prosody representing a light syllable of brief duration

Detailed Definition
Short quantity refers to a metrical syllable that is unstressed or brief in duration, essential to classical quantitative verse where syllable length—not stress—determines rhythm; in English prosody, it often corresponds to unstressed syllables in accentual-syllabic meters.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Greek metrics, a short quantity is a breve (˘) marking a short syllable; Latin poetry uses short quantity in dactylic hexameter (e.g., “arma” = short-short-long); In scansion, “above” has a short quantity on “a”; Classical prosody distinguishes long (–) and short (˘) quantities for meter
Additional Notes
short quantity: In classical prosody (meter based on vowel length), a vowel or syllable that is pronounced for a brief duration (breve u), distinguishing it from a long quantity (-).
Also Known As
Brief quantity short measure reduced prosodic value Breve
Skip to main content