Home › Glossary › Letter W

weak ending

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

The completion of a poetic line with a less forceful unstressed syllable

Detailed Definition
A weak ending is a metrical line that concludes with an unstressed syllable (a feminine ending), creating a softer, more open or unresolved cadence compared to the decisive closure of a stressed (masculine) ending; common in iambic pentameter couplets or lyrical verse, weak endings can convey tentativeness, continuation, or emotional vulnerability, as in Shakespeare’s frequent use of feminine rhymes for reflective or melancholic passages.
Example
Example in poetry:
Weak ending appears in Emily Dickinson’s feminine rhymes: “room / storm”; In W.B. Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”: “artifice / gyre”; In Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool”: “June / soon”; In contemporary poet Kay Ryan’s slant endings; In Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel”: “cry / eye”.
Additional Notes
Weak ending = line ending on unstressed syllable (feminine rhyme); softens closure. Common in iambic tetrameter—note in ballads vs. masculine endings in epics.
Also Known As
Weak close Soft ending Feminine ending Unstressed finale extra syllable ending
Skip to main content