William shakespeare short poems with explanation

If you’ve studied any of Shakespeare’s sonnets you may have heard of ‘iambic pentameter’… but what exactly is iambic pentameter?

Iambic Pentameter Definition

Iambic

In a line of poetry, an ‘iamb’ is a foot or beat consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Or another way to think of it it a short syllable followed by a long syllable.

For example, deLIGHT, the SUN, forLORN, one DAY, reLEASE. English is the perfect language for iambus because of the way the stressed and unstressed syllables work. (Interestingly, the iamb sounds a little like a heartbeat).

Pentameter

‘Penta’ means five, so pentameter simply means five meters.

A line of poetry written in iambic pentameter has five feet = five sets of stressed syllables and unstressed syllables.

Putting these two terms together, iambic pentameter is a line of writing that consists of ten syllables in a specific pattern o