- Heterodyne (poetry)
In
poetry , a heterodyne is a word in which the syllable receiving stress and/or pitch change is other than thesyllable of longer quantity. This misalignment is considered by most people to bephonetically challenging to recite, and when applied sporadically to several words in succession, it usually attracts the listener's attention to a higher degree than the more natural-sounding blend of meter and stress/pitch.Only languages with a separate quantitative element can make substantial use of heterodynes, and people primarily refer to the poetry of
classical languages when evoking the term.
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