Enjambment is the carrying of a sentence, phrase, or thought past the end of a poetic line without a full pause. Instead of ending neatly at the line break, the sense runs on into the next line, which can create momentum, suspense, or a conversational flow. It is the opposite of end-stopping.
Also spelled "enjambement," it is the breaking of a syntactic unit (a phrase, clause, or sentence) by the end of a line or between two verses. Its opposite is end-stopping, where each linguistic unit corresponds with a single line. The term is directly borrowed from the French enjambement, meaning "straddling" or "bestriding".
Example
The kettle begins to sing at dawn,
and the house, still half asleep, leans in
to hear the small bright warning grow
from a whisper into steam.
The following lines from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (c. 1611) are heavily enjambed:
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown.
[n] the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line of verse into the next line without a pause