Choliamb
Quick answer: A choliamb, or limping iamb, is an iambic line that ends on a deliberate stumble, reversing the final beat. Learn its history and satiric uses.
A choliamb, also called a scazon or limping iamb, is an iambic line that deliberately breaks its own rhythm at the end, replacing the expected final rising beat with a heavy falling one. After a run of da-DUM da-DUM, the line closes DUM-DUM or DUM-da, so it seems to trip over its last foot. The Greek name means exactly that: lame iambic.
The stumble is the point. Greek poets used the choliamb for mockery, invective and low subjects, letting the broken ending undercut whatever dignity the line had built. It is one of the oldest examples of a metre carrying an attitude, and it still teaches a useful modern lesson: a violated pattern can say as much as the pattern itself.
How It Works
Set up a smooth iambic line, then wreck the ending on purpose. An invented pair: 'He swore he loved the truth, then sold it cheap' is regular; 'He swore he loved the truth, then sold friends' limps, because 'sold friends' plants two heavy stresses where the ear expected a light-heavy close. The reader feels the hitch even without knowing the term.
In classical practice, the first five feet behaved like normal iambics while the sixth was reversed, a spondee or trochee instead of an iamb. Because the swap always happens in the same place, the limp becomes a signature rather than a mistake.
Where You Will See It
Hipponax of Ephesus, a sixth-century BC satirist with a famously vicious tongue, is credited with inventing the form, and it stayed attached to abuse and comedy ever after. Callimachus revived it for learned wit. In Latin, Catullus used choliambs for some of his sharpest poems, including his ridicule of social climbers, and Martial kept the tradition of the limping line for epigram.
English has no strict choliambic tradition, but the device of ending an iambic line on a jarring double stress is common wherever poets want a sour or comic finish; you can hear deliberate final-foot reversals in modern satirical verse and in poets like Philip Larkin when a line curdles at its close.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Reserve the limp for lines that deserve it. Write clean iambics while the speaker is being reasonable, then let the metre stumble exactly when the pretence collapses: a boast, a lie, a punchline. Placement is everything; one limping line in a smooth stanza lands harder than a whole poem of them.
This is also good training for revision. Once you can break a rhythm on purpose, you can spot the places where you have broken it by accident.
What poets can take from this
- Establish at least two or three smooth iambic lines before you spring the limp, or there is no pattern to break.
- Put the reversed foot at the very end of the line; a mid-line stumble reads as a different device.
- Match the limp to the content: mockery, deflation, bad news, comic timing.
- Use strong monosyllables ('sold friends', 'dead wrong') to force the final double stress.
- Do not overuse it; a permanent limp stops feeling like a limp.
Try it yourself
Write a 10-line satirical portrait of someone who talks a better game than they play. Keep the poem in iambic pentameter, but end exactly three lines with a choliambic stumble, placed where the portrait's flattery gives way to truth.
Questions
What is the difference between a choliamb and an ordinary metrical substitution?
Ordinary substitutions vary the rhythm anywhere in the line and are usually neutral in tone. The choliamb reverses the final foot specifically and systematically, and it carries a traditional flavour of mockery or deflation.
Is choliamb the same as scazon?
Yes. Scazon is the Greek word for limping and refers to the same metre. Some scholars use scazon for the general limping effect and choliamb for the iambic version specifically.
Why would a poet deliberately break their own metre?
Because a broken expectation is expressive. Once the reader's ear trusts the rhythm, a stumble can signal irony, collapse or comedy without a single extra word.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.