pentameter

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pen·tam·e·ter

(pĕn-tăm′ĭ-tər)

1. Verse written in lines of five metrical feet.

2. A single line of such verse.

[Latin, from Greek pentametros : penta-, penta- + metron, measure; see meter¹.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

pentameter

(pɛnˈtæmɪtə)

1. (Poetry) a verse line consisting of five metrical feet

2. (Poetry) (in classical prosody) a verse line consisting of two dactyls, one stressed syllable, two dactyls, and a final stressed syllable

adj

(Poetry) designating a verse line consisting of five metrical feet

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

pen•tam•e•ter

(pɛnˈtæm ɪ tər)
n.

1. a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet.

2. unrhymed verse of five iambic feet; English heroic verse.

adj.

3. consisting of five metrical feet.

[1540–50; < Latin pentametrus < Greek pentámetros. See penta-, meter²]

pen•tam′e•trist, n.

pentameter

a verse of five metrical feet.

pentameter

A meter of five feet to the line.

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Noun

pentameter - a verse line having five metrical feet

verse line, verse - a line of metrical text

Translations

pentametro

pentameter

[penˈtæmɪtəʳ] N → pentámetro m

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

pentameter

n → Pentameter m

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

pentameter

[pɛntˈæmɪtəʳ] n → pentametro

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

References in classic literature ?

Even so, several of them do not really belong to the series; composed in stanza forms, they are selected from his earlier poems and here pressed into service, and on the average they are less excellent than those which he wrote for their present places (in the rimed pentameter couplet that he adopted from the French).

His stanza combinations reproduce all the well-proportioned grace of his French models, and to the pentameter riming couplet of his later work he gives the perfect ease and metrical variety which match the fluent thought.

View in context

Your stool limps like one of Martial's distiches; it has one hexameter leg and one pentameter leg."

View in context

It is odd therefore, that the one apposite passage which recurred to me in its entirety was in hexameters and pentameters

View in context

Unrhymed iambic pentameters -- the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.

View in context

Det Chf Insp Joan Atkin said: "Northumbria Police are supporting Operation Pentameter and will respond in partnership with others to this type of organised criminality, as and when offences come to notice."

Crackdown goes on

The raids were part of Operation Pentameter - a nationwide scheme aiming to crack down on people trafficking.

Chinese sex slave freed in latest raid on brothel; POLICE SWOOP ON FLAT AND ARREST SUSPECTED TRAFFICKER

Five locations in Anglesey, Conwy and Denbighshire were targeted as part of the UK-wide Operation Pentameter. The five arrested, three men and two women, were detained.

Five arrested after police rescue three sex slaves

Operation Pentameter brings together all 55 forces in the UK, plus the Republic of Ireland.

`Help us tackle the traffickers'

Though the prose simplifies Shakespeare's complex iambic pentameter verses, it does not change the spirit of the stories or soften the calamity in Shakespeare's famous tragedies.

Usborne Stories from Shakespeare

Let them eat iambic pentameter: Joseph Papp opens the first free season of the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park with Othello (directed by Stuart Vaughan) and Twelfth Night (with Papp at the helm) on the bill.

July/August theatre almanac

The volume is also remarkable for the technical and metrical variety, ranging from Audenesque jingles to iambic pentameter as dense as late Shakespeare.