Feminine Ending
Quick answer: A feminine ending is an extra unstressed syllable at the close of a metrical line, softening the finish. Learn its uses from Shakespeare to modern verse.
A feminine ending is an extra unstressed syllable at the end of a metrical line, beyond the pattern's official count, so that the line finishes falling rather than landing on a beat. An iambic pentameter line with a feminine ending carries eleven syllables, the last one light. The most quoted example in English is the opening of Hamlet's great soliloquy, where the word question leaves the line hanging on an unstressed final syllable.
The device matters because line endings are where verse breathes, and the quality of the breath changes everything. A line that ends on a stress clicks shut; a feminine ending leaves the door ajar. Poets and playwrights have used that slight irresolution for hesitation, intimacy, unease and flow between lines for as long as English meter has existed.
How It Works
The extra syllable is not counted as a new foot; it hangs off the final beat like a soft echo. Compare two invented pentameters. Masculine close: I locked the house and walked into the dark. Feminine close: I locked the house and stood there in the doorway. The second line's final light syllable withholds the click of completion, and the sentence seems to lean into whatever comes next. Because words like doorway, water, morning and sorrow end unstressed, English offers endless natural material for the effect.
Where You Will See It
Shakespeare's use of feminine endings increased markedly across his career, and scholars actually use the frequency as one test for dating his plays; the late plays let line after line fall away softly, loosening the verse toward speech. Chaucer's pentameter, with its sounded final e, was full of falling closes. In rhymed verse the device pairs with feminine rhyme, where the stressed rhyming syllables carry unstressed partners, as in turning and burning. Sustained runs of feminine endings give a distinctive dying fall you can hear in much dramatic monologue since Browning.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Use feminine endings to keep momentum through a verse paragraph, since the unresolved syllable nudges the reader over the line break. Use them for speakers who hesitate, grieve or think aloud. Contrast is the real instrument: after five soft closes, one hard masculine ending sounds like a verdict. Contest judges reading for structure notice endings above almost everything else, a point worth remembering when you polish a Writory entry before the 25th.
What poets can take from this
- End on words like water, open or falling when you want the line to exhale.
- Alternate feminine and masculine endings to control the rhythm of certainty and doubt.
- Do not rhyme feminine endings with masculine ones; the mismatch grates.
- In blank verse, scatter feminine endings to loosen formality toward speech.
- Save a firm stressed ending for the line that must sound final.
Try it yourself
Write a dramatic monologue of twelve pentameter lines for a speaker deciding whether to send a difficult letter. Give every line a feminine ending except the last, and let that single masculine close carry the decision.
Questions
What is the difference between a feminine ending and a feminine rhyme?
A feminine ending is a single extra unstressed syllable closing any metrical line, rhymed or not. A feminine rhyme is a rhyme of two or more syllables where the final one is unstressed, as in singing and ringing. The ending concerns meter; the rhyme concerns sound-matching.
Does a feminine ending break the meter?
No. Prosodists treat the extra unstressed syllable as a licensed variation, sometimes called a hypermetrical syllable. The line still counts its full set of beats; it simply falls away after the last one.
Why is it called a feminine ending?
The name comes from French versification, where adjectives with a final unstressed e are grammatically feminine. The label describes syllable weight, not anything about gender, and some modern critics prefer terms like falling or unstressed ending.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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