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iambic

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iambic

In poetry, any verse metre in which the basic unit (the foot) consists of two syllables, the first unstressed, the second stressed. Iambic metre is close to natural speech and is one of the most widely used metres in English verse. The following example is a line from Thomas Gray's poem ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751). It has five iambic feet, and is thus in a form known as iambic pentameter. The cur / few tolls / the knell / of part / ing day

Iambic pentameter is the basis of blank verse, a form frequently used in Elizabethan drama.
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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
It is unfortunately impossible to trace the plan of the poem, which presumably detailed the adventures of this unheroic character: the metre used was a curious mixture of hexametric and iambic lines.
Collection Of Hesiod, Homer and Homerica by Homer View in context
For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac, or any similar metre.
The Poetics of Aristotle by Aristotle View in context
, and in the last line the iambic pentameter gives place to an Alexandrine (an iambic hexameter).
A History of English Literature by Fletcher, Robert Huntington View in context
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