IAMB

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An 'iamb' or 'iambus' is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable (as in i-amb). This terminology was adopted in the description of accentual-syllabic verse in English, where it refers to a foot comprising an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (as in a-bove).

Contents

Accentual-syllabic use

Examples

Ballad Verse (Tetrameter and Trimeter)

Tetrameter

Pentameter

Heptameter

See also

Accentual-syllabic use

In accentual-syllabic verse we could describe an iamb as a foot that goes like this:

da

DUM

Using the 'ictus and x' notation (see systems of scansion for a full discussion of various notations) we can write this as:

x

/

The word 'attempt' is a natural iamb:

x	/
at-	tempt

Iambic pentameter is one of the most commonly used measures in English and German poetry. A line of iambic pentameter comprises five consecutive iambs.
Iambic trimeter is the metre of the spoken verses in Greek tragedy and comedy. In English accentual-syllabic verse, iambic trimeter is a line comprising three iambs.
Another common iambic form is ballad verse, in which a line of iambic tetrameter is succeeded by a line of iambic trimeter, usually in quatrain form.
A. B. Paterson wrote much of his poetry in iambic heptameter (which is sometimes called the 'fourteener'), and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' also conforms to this stress pattern (although it is usually written as though it were composed of lines alternating between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter).
The reverse of an iamb is called a trochee.

Examples

Ballad Verse (Tetrameter and Trimeter)

:A 'nar'row 'fel'low 'in' the 'grass'
:Oc'cas'ion'al'ly 'rides'. (Emily Dickinson)

Tetrameter

:'Twas 'bril'lig, 'and' the 'sli'thy 'toves'
:Did 'gyre' and 'gim'ble 'in' the 'wabe'. (Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky")

Pentameter

:To 'strive', to 'seek', to 'find', and 'not' to 'yield'. (Alfred Tennyson, "Ulysses")
:Shall 'I' com'pare' thee 'to' a 'sum'mer's 'day'? (William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18)

Heptameter

:I 's'pose' the 'flats' is 'pret'ty 'green' up 'there' in 'I'ron'bark'. (A. B. Paterson, The Man from Ironbark)
Key:

★ Non-bold = unstressed syllable

★ 'Bold' = stressed syllable

See also

Anapaest