Pyrrhic

The pyrrhic is a conventional disyllabic foot of two unstressed syllables (UU) which, in syllabo-tonic verse, replaces the iamb or trochee where the metrical scheme calls for a stress but the word does not provide one. The pyrrhic is not an independent measure but the most common deviation, a "lightening" of the line: the omitted metrical stress makes the rhythm more flexible and closer to natural speech, preventing the mechanical monotony of scansion. It is largely the distribution of pyrrhics that creates the individual rhythmic pattern of a given poem. In analysing an iambic or trochaic text, the versification scholar first of all notes the positions of pyrrhics as an index of rhythmic distinctiveness.