foot, in verse, the smallest metrical unit of measurement. The prevailing kind and number of feet, revealed by scansion, determines the metre of a poem. In classical (or quantitative) verse, a foot, or metron, is a combination of two or more long and short syllables. A short syllable is known as an arsis, a long syllable as a thesis. There are 28 different feet in classical verse, ranging from the pyrrhic (two short syllables) to the dispondee (four long syllables). The adaptation of classical metrics to the strongly accented Germanic languages, such as English, does not provide an entirely reliable standard of measurement. The terminology persists, however, a foot usually being defined as a group of one stressed (´) and one or two unstressed (˘) syllables. An exception is the spondee, which consists of two stressed syllables; in English verse, this is usually two monosyllables, such as the phrase “He who.” The commonest feet in English verse are the iamb, an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable, as in the word ˘re| ´port; the trochee, a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable, as in the word ´dai|˘ly; the anapest, two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable, as in ˘ser|e˘| ´nade; and the dactyl, a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, as in ´mer|˘ri|˘ly.
If a single line of the poem contains only one foot, it is called monometer; two feet, dimeter; three feet, trimeter; four feet, tetrameter; five feet, pentameter; six feet, hexameter; seven feet, heptameter; eight feet, octameter. More than six, however, is rare. The metre of a poem (e.g., iambic pentameter, dactylic hexameter) is the kind plus the number of feet in each line.