Foot (prosody) in the context of "Syllable weight"

A dactyl (/ˈdæktɪl/; from Greek δάκτυλος 'finger') is a foot in poetic meter. In quantitative verse, often used in Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight. The best-known use of dactylic verse is in the epics attributed to the Greek poet Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. In accentual verse, often used in English, a dactyl is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables—the opposite is the anapaest (two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable).

An example of dactylic meter is the first line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem Evangeline (1847), which is in dactylic hexameter:

In linguistics, a prosodic unit is a segment of speech that occurs with specific prosodic properties. These properties can be those of stress, intonation (a single pitch and rhythm contour), or tonal patterns.

Prosodic units occur at a hierarchy of levels, from the syllable, the metrical foot and phonological word to the intonational unit (IU) and to a complete utterance. However, the term is often restricted to intermediate levels which do not have a dedicated terminology. Prosodic units do not generally correspond to syntactic units, such as phrases and clauses; it is thought that they reflect different aspects of how the brain processes speech, with prosodic units being generated through on-line interaction and processing, and with morphosyntactic units being more automated.

Scansion (/ˈskæn.ʃən/ SKAN-shən, rhymes with mansion; verb: to scan), or a system of scansion, is the method or practice of determining and (usually) graphically representing the metrical pattern of a line of verse. In classical poetry, these patterns are quantitative based on the different lengths of each syllable, while in English poetry, they are based on the different levels of stress placed on each syllable. In both cases, the meter often has a regular foot. Over the years, many systems have been established to mark the scansion of a poem.

The phonological word or prosodic word (also called pword, PrWd; symbolised as ω) is a constituent in the phonological hierarchy. It is higher than the syllable and the foot but lower than intonational phrase and the phonological phrase. It is largely held to be a prosodic domain in which phonological features within the same lexeme may spread from one morph to another, from one clitic to a clitic host, or from one clitic host to a clitic.

The phonological word and grammatical word are non-isomorphic. Sometimes what counts as a word for the phonology can be either smaller or larger than what counts as a word for syntactic purposes. A clear case of this mismatch is compound words, which count as two words phonologically, but one in the syntax.

A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line.

A line missing two syllables is called brachycatalectic. A line with an additional syllable is called hypercatalectic.

In poetic meter, diaeresis (/daɪˈɛrəsɪs, -ˈɪər-/ dy-ERR-ə-siss, -⁠EER-; also spelled diæresis or dieresis) has two meanings: the separate pronunciation of the two vowels in a diphthong for the sake of meter, and a division between feet that corresponds to the division between words.

Synaeresis, the pronunciation of two vowels as a diphthong (or as a long vowel), is the opposite of the first definition.

In English poetry substitution, also known as inversion, is the use of an alien metric foot in a line of otherwise regular metrical pattern. For instance in an iambic line of "da DUM", a trochaic substitution would introduce a foot of "DUM da".