Foot
Quick answer: A foot is the basic unit of poetic meter, a small fixed cluster of stressed and unstressed syllables. Learn the common feet from iamb to dactyl and beyond.
A foot is the basic building block of poetic meter: a small, fixed cluster of syllables, usually two or three, with a set arrangement of stressed and unstressed beats. Lines of metrical verse are made by repeating one kind of foot a set number of times, the way a wall is made of one kind of brick. Name the foot, count the repetitions, and you have named the meter.
The idea comes from classical Greek verse, where feet measured long and short syllables and, according to tradition, kept time for dancing, which is where the word foot comes from. English borrowed the names but swapped the measurement: our feet track stress rather than length. Knowing the feet lets you read any discussion of meter without a dictionary open beside you.
The Common Feet
Six feet do almost all the work in English verse. In the patterns below, da is unstressed and DUM is stressed.
Rarer Feet
Beyond the big six lives a menagerie inherited from classical prosody: the amphibrach (da-DUM-da), the cretic (DUM-da-DUM), the molossus (three stresses), the tribrach (three unstressed syllables), and four syllable feet such as the choriamb, the ionic and the paeon. In English these rarely sustain whole poems. They matter mainly as names for local effects, moments where a line bunches or scatters its stresses, and as tools for describing songs, chants and comic verse where unusual rhythms thrive.
Feet and Line Length
Meter names combine the foot with a count of how many times it repeats: one foot per line is monometer, then dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, and upward into rarity. So a line of five iambs is iambic pentameter, and a line I might write as a quick example, the LAMP | still BURNS | aBOVE | the DOOR, is iambic tetrameter: four rising feet.
Real poems substitute freely, opening an iambic line with a trochee or dropping in a spondee for weight. Reading feet well means spotting these swaps and asking what they do, since a substitution is nearly always doing expressive work.
What poets can take from this
- Memorise the six common feet cold; every other metrical term builds on them.
- Practise finding feet in ordinary words: umbrella hides an amphibrach, understand hides an anapest.
- Treat rare feet as descriptions of local effects, not as meters to sustain for whole poems.
- When scanning, divide feet only after marking stresses, never before.
- Notice substitutions in poems you admire and steal the technique, not the words.
Try it yourself
Write a four line poem in which each line is built from a different foot: one iambic line, one trochaic, one anapestic, one dactylic, all on the same subject, then decide which movement suits the subject best.
Questions
How many types of poetic feet are there?
Classical prosody names dozens, covering every arrangement of two, three and four syllables. English poetry relies on about six: iamb, trochee, spondee, pyrrhic, anapest and dactyl, with the rest appearing as occasional variations.
What is a metrical substitution?
A substitution is swapping the expected foot for a different one at a single position, such as opening an iambic line with a trochee. Poets substitute to vary rhythm, add emphasis, or mirror the sense of the line.
Why is it called a foot?
The term comes from ancient Greek verse, where meter was closely tied to music and dance. The foot was the unit you could beat time to, reputedly with the actual foot, and the name survived the journey into English.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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