foot
What is Foot? Definition, Usage, and Literary Examples
Foot Definition
The literary term foot refers to an unit of measurement in poetry, comprised of patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. The combination of different numbers and types of feet is what determines poetic meter.
The word foot comes from the Old English fot, which references the “terminal part of the leg of a vertebrate animal” (e.g., the foot at the end of your ankle). Foot has been used as a linear unit of measurement since the Old English to delineate 12 inches. Foot in the metrical sense of verse comes from the late Old English via the translated Latin pes and Greek pous, both of which refer to the rise and fall of one’s tapping foot while keeping time to music or dancing.
The Composition of a Poetic Foot
The basic unit of measurement for poetic meter is the foot. Each foot is an individual unit that contains a specific number of syllables arranged in a particular pattern of emphasis.
Stressed and Unstressed Syllables
Poetic feet are determined by the number of syllables and the pattern of stressed vs. unstressed syllables.
Stressed syllables are emphasized, while unstressed syllables aren’t. For example, if you said the word Madam, the first syllable is stressed while the syllable is unstressed. This means you emphasize the first syllable (Ma) and not the second syllable (dam), making a sound that rises and falls, like “DA-dum.”
This is different than a word like today, where you would stress the second syllable (day) and leave the first syllable (to) unstressed, so the pattern of emphasis would sound more like “da-DUM.”
Stress/Accent in Linguistics
The poetic foot in English verse is determined by its number of syllables and the pattern of stress those syllables contain. In linguistics, however, rather than emphasis or stress, syllables are conceptualized according to their weight, or duration.
- A heavy syllable has a branching nucleus or a branching rime. A branching nucleus means the syllable contains a long vowel or a diphthong, such as the word eye. A branching rime contains a coda of one or more consonants that audibly end the syllable, like the word cat. Branching rimes are also referred to as closed syllables because the coda “closes” the syllable.
- A light syllable contains a short vowel and no coda, like the word fish.
- A superheavy syllable has a coda of two or more consonants, like the word meets.
These syllabic patterns were important components of meter in ancient Greek hexameter poetry and Latin literature. These classical metrical patterns were arranged by weight, or long and short syllables. The use of long and short, or heavy and light, syllables to determine foot is not prevalent in English.
Different Types of Poetic Feet
In English poetry, the most common feet are iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls, and anapests.
- Iambs have two syllables, the first being unstressed and the second being stressed. Examples include amuse, portray, and return.
- Trochees have two syllables in the opposite order: stressed then unstressed. Words like happy, clever, and planet are trochees.
- Spondees are feet with two stressed syllables, as in heartbreak, shortcake, and bathrobe.
- Dactyls have three syllables that occur in a pattern of stressed-unstressed-unstressed. Some examples of dactyls are the words merrily, buffalo, and scorpion.
- Anapests reverse dactyls’ order of emphasized syllables, with the first two syllables being unstressed and the third being stressed. Words like understand, interrupt, and even anapest itself are anapests.
How Feet Create Meter
These metrical feet are repeated across the length of the poetic line to create meter. Meter is determined how many times a specific foot is used within the line. The numeric value of meter is named based on Greek numerals such as mono for one, di for two, tri for three, and so on.
To name the meter of a verse, one generally combines the name of the foot (such as iamb or dactyl) and the number of feet per line. For example, a line comprised of five iambs would be called iambic pentameter, while a line that is made up of six dactyls would be called dactylic hexameter.
Why Writers Use Feet
Feet are used to create meter in poetry and verse plays. Meter helps create pacing and rhythm and adds a measured harmonious element to verse. Pace and melody can be established by which type of poetic foot and what numbered pattern of feet the writer chooses to employ. The sound and rhythm created by writers’ use of the poetic foot helps keep audiences engaged.
Examples of Poetic Feet in Literature
1. Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee”
Poe begins this poem with the lines:
It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden lived there whom you may know
The first line contains three anapests and an iamb, which makes it anapestic tetrameter. The second line is an iambic trimeter because it opens with an anapest but concludes with two iambic feet. The third line is another tetrameter, but here it’s equally comprised of anapests and iambs, making it a split line. The variation between anapests and iambs creates a lovely haunting melody.
2. t’ai freedom ford, “dear Ebonics”
ford’s Lambda-award winning collection & more black is a collection of modern “Black-ass sonnets.” Although her poems eschew the consistent meter and rhyme associated with that form in favor of a free verse approach, ford does employ poetic feet as a device, particularly in the last line of this poem:
your heartbeat whisper: i be i be i be.
This series of iambs mimics the sound of a whisper and places the emphasis over and over again on be, reiterating the poet’s continued existence.
3. Walt Whitman, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”
In this poem, from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, he describes the origin of his poetic voice by utilizing a combination of dactyls and trochees:
Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking
Out of the mockingbird’s throat, the musical shuttle
The first line contains a dactyl followed by a trochee and then another dactyl followed by a trochee. The second line consists of two dactyls, a trochee, another dactyl, and a concluding trochee. The pattern of these dactyls and trochees woven together creates a hypnotic music.