In this, according to the technical language of the old prosodists, when a syllable is wanting, the verse is said to be catalectic; when the measure is exact, the line is acatalectic; when there is a redundant syllable, it forms hypermeter.

Some prosodists call the variant foot, in die former instance, an amphibrach, and would probably, in the latter, suppose either an additional pyrrhic, or an amphibrach with still a surplus syllable; but others scan, in these cases, by the iambus only, calling what remains after the last long syllable hypermeter; and this is, I think, the better way.

The following lines have ten syllables in each, yet the measure is not iambic of five feet, but that of four with hypermeter: "There was | ~an =an | -cient sage | philosopher, Who had | read Al | -exan | -der

One long syllable is, in some instances, used as a foot; but it is one or more short syllables only, that we can properly admit as hypermeter.

A prosodist might just as well scan all iambics into trochaics, by pronouncing each initial short syllable to be hypermeter.

5.I have hinted, in the main paragraph above, that it is a common error of our prosodists, to underrate, by one foot, the measure of all trochaic lines, when they terminate with single rhyme; an error into which they are led by an other as gross, that of taking for hypermeter, or mere surplus, the whole rhyme itself, the sound or syllable most indispensable to the verse.

If such lines be divided and rhymed at the middle of the fourth foot, where the cæsural pause is apt to fall, the first part of each will be a trochaic line of four feet, single-rhymed and catalectic, while the rest of it will become an iambic line of three feet, with double rhyme and hypermeter.

Example with Hypermeter.

Example I.Lines with Hypermeter and Double Rhyme.

For example, three dactylic stanzas, in each of which a pentameter couplet is followed by a hexameter line, and this again by a heptameter, are introduced by Prof. Hart thus: "The Dactylic Tetrameter, Pentameter, and Hexameter, with the additional or hypermeter syllable, are all found combined in the following extraordinary specimen of versification.

What mean the technical words, catalectic, acatalectic, and hypermeter?

Can it be right, to regard as hypermeter the long rhyming syllables of a line?

from synchysis Hyperbole, defined Hyperboles, by what commonly expressed Hypermeter, meaning of, in scansion Hyphen, its uses present use in compound names Rules for the insertion of, in compounds signif.