Metrical foot

The metrical foot is the smallest recurring unit of poetic metre in the syllabo-tonic system, a conventional combination of one strong (stressed) and one or more weak (unstressed) positions. Feet are divided into disyllabic (iamb U—, trochee —U) and trisyllabic (dactyl —UU, amphibrach U—U, anapaest UU—). The number of feet in a line determines the measure: dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter and so on. The concept of the foot is borrowed from ancient (quantitative) metrics, where it rested on syllable length, and adapted to accentual languages, including Ukrainian, whose rhythm is based on word stress. The foot is the working instrument of scansion and of analysing poetic measure.