Foot

A foot is the smallest regular unit of meter in a poem: a group of stressed and unstressed syllables that repeat to create rhythm. In English verse, feet are usually named by their stress pattern, such as an iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, or spondee. A single foot may cross word boundaries, and poets use feet to shape the beat of a line.

• iambic (iamb) - (e.g.) attain (unaccented/accented)
• trochaic (trochee) - (e.g.) highway (accented/unaccented)
• anapestic (anapest) - (e.g.) understand  (unaccented/unaccented/accented)
• dactylic (dactyl) - (e.g.) elephant (accented/unaccented/unaccented)
• spondaic (spondee) - (e.g.) woodchuck (unaccented/accented)

In poetry, many meters use a foot as the basic unit in their description of the underlying rhythmic structure of a poem. Both the quantitative meter of classical poetry and the accentual-syllabic meter of most poetry in English use the foot as the fundamental building block.

A foot is further described by the character and number of syllables it contains. In English, feet are named for the combination of accented and unaccented syllables. In other languages such as Latin and Greek, the duration of the syllable (long or short) is measured.

When scanning a line of verse, a poet looks at feet as the primary rhythmic unit rather than words. A foot can consist of multiple words, and a single word can contain many feet. Furthermore, a foot can and often does bridge multiple words, including, for example, the last two syllables of one word and the first of the next.

To scan for feet, one should focus on the stream of sound alone and set aside the actual meaning of the words.

Types of Line Lengths in Poetry

One foot: Monometer
Two feet: Dimeter
Three feet: Trimeter
Four feet: Tetrameter
Five feet: Pentameter
Six feet: Hexameter
Seven feet: Heptameter
Eight feet: Octameter

Example