Home › Glossary › Letter S

Short-short-long monometer

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 monometer line consisting of a single anapestic foot (two short syllables followed by a long one), rare and highly rhythmic.

Detailed Definition
Short-short-long monometer is a single-foot line composed of an anapest (two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed); extremely rare due to its brevity, it may appear in experimental or minimalist poetry to create abrupt emphasis, rhythmic surprise, or as part of a larger metrical variation within a stanza.
Example
Example in poetry:
Robert Herrick’s “Upon Julia’s Clothes” uses short-short-long monometer: “Whenas / in silks / my Julia goes”; Emily Dickinson’s dashes create rhythmic units like “I’m / no / body!” (short-short-long); Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”: “The appar / ition / of these faces” approximates short-short-long monometer; Contemporary poet Kay Ryan uses “Turtle” lines like “Her / shell / is a house” to mimic this pattern; A.E. Housman’s “Loveliest of trees”: “And / since / to look at things in bloom” fits the structure; Lucille Clifton’s “my dream about being white”: “me / in / white” echoes short-short-long monometer for ironic brevity.
Additional Notes
A monometer line consisting of a single Anapestic foot (∪∪-). This is exceedingly short, often used for dramatic emphasis or as part of a varied-line stanza, like a refrain or coda, to create a sharp, isolated rhythmic beat.
Also Known As
clipped single-foot brief pattern line Anapaestic monometer
Skip to main content