iamb

began as the lampooning measure — the one in which people lampooned one another.

Recast in definition form from: “The appropriate meter was also here introduced; hence the measure is still called the iambic or lampooning measure, being that in which people lampooned one another.”

is the most colloquial of meters: ordinary conversation falls into iambic lines more often than into any other verse.

Recast in definition form from: “For the iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial we see it in the fact that conversational speech runs into iambic lines more frequently than into any other kind of verse; rarely into hexameters, and only when we drop the colloquial intonation.”

blank verse

Hegel

iambic pentameter

sonnet

William Shakespeare

iamb, n.Definitions

iamb