hendecasyllable

Eleven syllables exactly

A hendecasyllable is a line of verse containing exactly eleven syllables.

The term appears most often in discussions of classical Greek and Latin poetry, where the hendecasyllabic meter was a standard form, and in Italian poetry, where the eleven-syllable line dominates traditional verse including Dante's work.

English poets have occasionally experimented with the form, though it never achieved the same prominence as in Romance languages.

meter

syllable

Unit of pronunciation

dactyl · spondee · trochee · pentameter · stressed · unstressed · syllabic · quantitative · cadence · eleven

classical

Martial

Of or relating to war

scansion · Sapphic · antiquity · Rome · manuscript · Augustan · elegiac · lyric · ode · Greek

poetry

sonnet

Fourteen-line metered poem

verse · stanza · line · lyric · ode · epigram · Tennyson · couplet · rhyme · poet

Opposites
syllable count

hendecasyllablemonosyllable

Word of one sound-unit

disyllable · trisyllable · pentameter · hexameter

metrical complexity/length

hendecasyllabledimeter

Two-foot poetic line

trimeter · tetrameter · free verse · prose

Family

monosyllable, polysyllable, trisyllable

Familiarity
Top 1,000,000
Profile
Used worldwide · Timeless · Abstract · Rated G