Molossus (poetry)

Metrical feet and accents

Disyllables
◡ ◡	pyrrhic, dibrach
◡ –	iamb
– ◡	trochee, choree
– –	spondee
Trisyllables
◡ ◡ ◡	tribrach
– ◡ ◡	dactyl
◡ – ◡	amphibrach
◡ ◡ –	anapaest, antidactylus
◡ – –	bacchius
– ◡ –	cretic, amphimacer
– – ◡	antibacchius
– – –	molossus
See main article for tetrasyllables.

A molossus is a metrical foot used in Greek and Latin poetry. It consists of three long syllables. Examples of Latin words constituting molossi are audiri, cantabant, virtutem.

In English poetry, syllables are usually categorized as being either stressed or unstressed, rather than long or short, and the molossus appears rarely. There is a sustained example in the Mikado by WS Gilbert:

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,

In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,

Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,

From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!

And this from La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats:

The sedge has withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.

Another example has been found in Gerard Manley Hopkins:

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage

Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells

The molossus is used quite often in proper names. For example, Great North Road.