Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

and

Latin poetry The history of Latin poetry can be understood as the adaptation of Greek models. The verse comedies of Plautus, the earliest surviving examples of Latin literature, are estimated to have been composed around 205–184 BC. History Scholars conv ...

, a choriamb (Ancient Greek: χορίαμβος - ''khoriambos'') is a metron (prosodic foot) consisting of four

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

s in the pattern long-short-short-long (— ^{‿ ‿} —), that is, a

trochee In poetic metre, a trochee ( ) is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, unstressed one, in qualitative meter, as found in English, and in modern linguistics; or in quantitative meter, as found in ...

alternating with an iamb. Choriambs are one of the two basic metra that do not occur in spoken verse, as distinguished from true lyric or sung verse. The choriamb is sometimes regarded as the "nucleus" of

Aeolic verse Aeolic verse is a classification of Greek lyric, Ancient Greek lyric poetry referring to the distinct verse forms characteristic of the two great poets of Archaic Greece, Archaic Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus of Mytilene, Alcaeus, who composed in the ...

, because the pattern long-short-short-long pattern occurs, but to label this a "choriamb" is potentially misleading.Halporn ''et al.'', ''Meters'', pp. 29–31. In the prosody of

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

and other modern European languages, "choriamb" is sometimes used to describe four-syllable sequence of the pattern stressed-unstressed-unstressed-stressed (again, a trochee followed by an iamb): for example, "over the hill", "under the bridge", and "what a mistake!".

English prosody

In English, the choriamb is often found in the first four syllables of iambic pentameter verses, as here in

Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tub ...

' ''

To Autumn "To Autumn" is a poetry, poem by English Romanticism, Romantic poet John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821). The work was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats's poetry that included ''Lamia (poem), ...

'': :Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? :Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find :Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, :Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; :Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, :Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook :Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: :And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep :Steady thy laden head across a brook; :Or by a cider-press, with patient look, :Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

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References

{{Reflist Metrical feet

English prosody

See also

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References