25 February 2005: Back today to poetic meter, which Michael Peverett and I, and perhaps a few others, are still discussing at New-Poetry. Michael seems to feel that "ictus," the official term for the stressed syllable in a foot which has come into the conversation, is a, well, icky term. He is with me in preferring terms that are self-explanatory, in English, or as close to that as possible. Support, at last! Here's what he said in a recent post:
Googling "ictus" proved quite instructive.
1. In Latin prosody, it does not precisely mean either "long syllable"
or "accented syllable". It does mean the initial syllable of a foot, which may
have provided a tempo indication and carried a notional stress, very
comparable to the first note in a bar of music. Thus, in Latin, the second
syllable of an iamb could never, by definition, be an ictus.
Which seems to confirm my view that borrowing metrical terms from other
traditions is a recipe for confusion. I think I'm going to go with Grumman's
oddly memorable "nyllables" - and their opposite, "stryllables" perhaps.
2. train.army.mil - See how you get on with this practice exam on ictus
and meter in the context of being a military baton-master!
3. "Ictus" in Spanish (and Italian) means a stroke, in the sense of "una
enfermedad cerebrovascular"...
Curiously thought-provoking, though exactly what thought I wd find hard to put
into words. ...
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"Styrllables" seems a good attempt to me, but I fear "str" without the short-e-sound isn't enough, and the suggestion of "stray." I came up with a few competing terms, but the best of them, "emphasyll," doesn't seem as good. The latter also conflicts with my use of "syll" or "syl" somewhere else as having to do with a part of a syllable rather than a whole syllable. I'm now trying for something that means "most significant syllable in a foot," with "foot" part of it. "Foot-core," is near what I want, but I don't like it. Ha, maybe "foot-peak?" Or "foot-crest?" I favor the latter. Note the rhyme with "stressed!"
Note: I wrote this entry two days ago, on its proper date, 25 February 2005, but absent-mindedly failed to move it from my blog work-area to my blog display-area. Next day, not realizing I hadn't done that, I deleted it. Hence, today's rewrite. This is historically important because it was today, not the 25th, that I came up with . . . "foot-crest."
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