Meter is the structured pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse. It is the rhythmic skeleton of formal poetry — the recurring beat that the ear learns to expect and that the poet can satisfy, delay, or violate for effect.
The basic unit of meter is the foot, a grouping of syllables with a fixed stress pattern. Common feet in English-language poetry include the iamb (unstressed–stressed: da-DUM), the trochee (stressed–unstressed: DUM-da), the anapest (unstressed–unstressed–stressed: da-da-DUM), and the dactyl (stressed–unstressed–unstressed: DUM-da-da). A line’s meter is named by combining the foot type with the number of feet: iambic pentameter (five iambs), trochaic tetrameter (four trochees), and so on.
Meter is not the same as rhythm. Rhythm is what actually happens when a line is spoken aloud — the living pattern of emphasis, pause, and speed. Meter is the underlying template against which rhythm plays. The tension between the two is where much of the energy of formal verse lives: a perfectly regular line can feel mechanical, while a line that departs from its meter at the right moment can feel urgent or broken or tender.
In free verse, meter is absent as a governing structure, but metrical patterns still appear locally — a sudden run of iambs in an otherwise irregular poem can create a moment of formality or inevitability.
Related terms
- prosody — the broader study of sound patterning in verse
- line break — where the line ends, which interacts with metrical expectation
- free verse — poetry written without a fixed metrical pattern
- rhyme — sound repetition that often works alongside meter
- iamb — the dominant metrical foot in English verse
- trochee — the falling-rhythm counterpart to the iamb