Poetic rhythm

A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually the same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming (perfect rhyming) is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic effect in the final position of lines within poems or songs. More broadly, a rhyme may also variously refer to other types of similar sounds near the ends of two or more words. Furthermore, the word rhyme has come to be sometimes used as a shorthand term for any brief poem, such as a nursery rhyme or Balliol rhyme.

single metrical line in a poetic composition

the number and type of lines and syllables that a verse must have

in linguistics, relative emphasis given to a syllable or other speech element

thumb|300px|An example of a caesura in modern western music notation

metrical unit in poetry

diacritical mark

In poetry, a couplet ( ) or distich ( ) is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there is a grammatical pause at the end of a line of verse. In a run-on (open) couplet, the meaning of the first line continues to the second.

alt=Some typefaces differentiate Cyrillic style (top) and Latin style breve (bottom)|thumb|PT Fonts|Some typefaces differentiate Cyrillic style (top) and Latin style breve (bottom)|class=skin-invert-image A breve ( , less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark , shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called '''''', . It resembles the caron (, the wedge or in Czech, in Slovak) but is rounded, in contrast to the angular tip of the caron. In many forms of Latin, is used for a shorter, softer variant of a vowel, such as "Ĭ", wh

In poetry, enjambment (; from the French enjamber) is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next, without punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped. The origin of the word is credited to the French word enjamber, which means 'to straddle or encroach'.

In poetic and musical meter, and by analogy in publishing, an anacrusis (from , , literally: 'pushing up', plural anacruses) is a brief introduction. In music, it is also known as a pickup beat, or fractional pick-up, i.e. a note or sequence of notes, a motif, which precedes the first downbeat in a bar in a musical phrase.

Shloka or śloka ( '''''', from the root , ) in a broader sense, according to Monier-Williams's dictionary, is "any verse or stanza; a proverb, saying"; but in particular it refers to the 32-syllable verse, derived from the Vedic anuṣṭubh metre, used in the Bhagavad Gita and many other works of classical Sanskrit literature.

poetry unit

concepts in poetic meter

Mukhammas (Arabic مخمس 'fivefold') refers to a type of Persian or Urdu cinquain or pentastich with Sufi connections based on a pentameter. And have five lines in each paragraph.

A hemistich (; via Latin from Greek , from "half" and "verse") is a half-line of verse, followed and preceded by a caesura, that makes up a single overall prosodic or verse unit. In Latin and Greek poetry, the hemistich is generally confined to drama. In Greek tragedy, characters exchanging clipped dialogue to suggest rapidity and drama would speak in hemistichs (in hemistichomythia). The Roman poet Virgil employed hemistichs in the Aeneid to indicate great duress in his characters, where they were incapable of forming complete lines due to emotional or physical pain.

In linguistics, synaeresis (; also spelled syneresis) is a phonological process of sound change in which two adjacent vowels within a word are combined into a single syllable.

poetic form having a fixed or constrained number of syllables per line

a poetic meter, used in legends in Epic Sanscrit or Prakrit, but not used in the Vedas; often found in Jain and Buddhist texts in prakrit

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.

Verse with a fixed number of syllables and stresses

one of the examples is Beowulf

thumb|alt=Trust not yourself; but your defects to know, Make use of ev'ry friend—and ev'ry foe.|An example of scansion over a quote from Alexander Pope Scansion ( , 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.

classification of a syllable, where a heavy syllable has form /CVV/ or /CVC/, while /CV/ is a light syllable, and (sometimes) a /CVVC/ or /CVCC/ is a superheavy syllable

meter in Arabic, Persian, Turkic and Urdu poetry

iambic verse of 15 syllables; common metric form in Medieval and Modern Greek

Sanskrit language feature

subdivision of a poem

the act of talking or chanting, usually in a monotone melody, over a rhythm or beat by a reggae deejay

In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps (plural ancipitia or (syllabae) ancipites) is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either a long or a short syllable.

'''''' (, ) is a metre and a metrical unit, found in both Vedic and Classical Sanskrit poetry, but with significant differences.

In Welsh-language poetry, cynghanedd (, literally "concinnity" or "harmony") is the concept of sound-arrangement within one line, using stress, alliteration and rhyme. The various forms of cynghanedd show up in the definitions of all formal Welsh verse forms, such as the awdl and cerdd dafod. Though of ancient origin, cynghanedd and variations of it are still used today by many Welsh-language poets. A number of poets have experimented with using cynghanedd in English-language verse, for instance Gerard Manley Hopkins. Some of Dylan Thomas's work is also influenced by cynghanedd.

The cywydd (; plural ) is one of the most important metrical forms in traditional Welsh poetry (cerdd dafod).

Singjaying is a Jamaican style of reggae vocals combining toasting and singing in an elastic format that encourages rhythmically compelling and texturally impressive vocal embellishments. The performer is called a singjay, a combination of singer and deejay.

thumb|A manuscript of an urjūza (versification) of Muqaddimat Ibn Rushd ("The Introduction of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd," grandfather of Ibn Rushd the philosopher) Rajaz (, literally 'tremor, spasm, convulsion as may occur in the behind of a camel when it wants to rise') is a metre used in classical Arabic poetry. A poem composed in this metre is an urjūza. The metre accounts for about 3% of surviving ancient and classical Arabic verse. Some historians believe that rajaz evolved from saj'.

Glyconic (from Glycon, a Greek lyric poet) is a form of meter in classical Greek and Latin poetry. The glyconic line is the most basic and most commonly used form of Aeolic verse, and it is often combined with others.

meter in Sanskrit and Prakrit verses

An acatalectic line of verse is one having the metrically complete number of syllables in the final foot. When talking about poetry written in English, the term is arguably of limited significance or utility—at least by comparison to its antonym, catalectic—for the simple reason that acatalexis is considered to be the "usual case" in the large majority of metrical contexts, and therefore explicit reference to it proves almost universally superfluous.

in poetry, an iambic metre

common metrical line in Polish poetry

Sanskrit poetic meter

Wāfir (, literally 'numerous, abundant, ample, exuberant') is a meter used in classical Arabic poetry. It is among the five most popular meters of classical Arabic poetry, accounting (alongside ṭawīl, basīṭ, kāmil, and mutaqārib) for 80-90% of lines and poems in the ancient and classical Arabic corpus.

Chhand (, , ) is a quatrain used in the poetic traditions of North India and Pakistan.

Stev is a form of Norwegian folk song consisting of four line lyric stanzas. The English version of the word is stave, meaning the stressed syllable in a metric verse.