Iambic tetrameter

Iambic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of four iambic feet. The word "tetrameter" simply means that there are four feet in the line; iambic tetrameter is a line comprising four iambs.

Some poetic forms rely upon iambic tetrameter: triolet, Onegin stanza, In Memoriam stanza, long measure (or long meter) ballad stanza.

Quantitative verse

The term originally applied to the quantitative meter of Classical Greek poetry, in which an iamb consisted of a short syllable followed by a long syllable.

Accentual-syllabic verse

The term was adopted to describe the equivalent meter in accentual-syllabic verse, as composed in English, German, Russian, and other languages. Here, iamb refers to an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. A line of iambic tetrameter consists of four such feet in a row:

da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

Examples

English

 
 ×    /    ×    / ×    /  ×  /
Come live with me and be my love

(Christopher Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love")

German

 
 ×    /   ×  /    × /  ×       /
Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön[1]

(Emanuel Schikaneder, libretto to The Magic Flute)

Hebrew

 
× /  × /  ×  /   × /
Adon Olam Asher Malach[2]

(the opening line of Adon Olam, a traditional hymn of anonymous authorship from the Jewish liturgy.)

gollark: Another somewhat problematic thing with Scratch (and the government here's "micro:bits", small single board computers which connect via USB and have a 5x5 LED matrix and a bunch of pins, and which they gave out to all students in my year a while back) is that they end up implying to you that you can only program things on dedicated special environments.
gollark: I think my suggested things would be more actually-useful to people.
gollark: <@241757436720054273> I guess Scratch may teach that a bit (though often you'll just be made to blindly follow a tutorial for "learn to code" stuff) but it doesn't teach it very *well* because it's generally lacking in useful constructs.
gollark: I always am except when I'm.not.
gollark: https://osmarks.tk/nemc ←TL;DR: scratch bad.

See also

Notes
  1. "This image is enchantingly lovely". See Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön.
  2. "Master of the world who reigns". See Adon Olam.
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