Common Measure (for shortness, especially in reference to hymns, "C.M.").—The same as ballad metre, but usually restricted to eights and sixes without substitution. (See also below,[ Chapter IV].)
Consonance.—In strictness merely "agreement of sound"; but sometimes used to designate full rhyme by vowel and consonant, as opposed to "assonance," i.e. rhyme by vowel only.
Couplet.—In proper English use this refers to a pair of verses only; and it probably should be, though it is not always, limited to cases where the members of the pair are exactly similar, as in the heroic couplet, the octosyllabic couplet. The original French word is much more elastic, and is applied to the long mono-rhymed tirades of Old French poems, to stanzas of more verses than two, and even to whole lyrics, usually of a light description. (See also Distich.)
Cretic.—See Amphimacer.
Dactyl.—A trisyllabic foot—long, short, short ( ̄ ̆ ̆ ). This foot, thanks to the great position of the dactylic hexameter in Greek and Latin, disputes, in those prosodies, the place of principal staple with the iambic; and, from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, almost constant endeavours have been made at imitating that metre in English, and consequently at working the dactyl in our language. It was, however, early discovered, even by favourers of classical "versing," that there is something awkward about the English dactyl. And in fact, though we have a very large number of words which are fair dactyls regarded separately, they are no sooner set in a verse than they seem to slip or waggle into other measures, and especially the anapæst. When, by some chance or by some sleight of the poet, they are found, they are usually either continuous, or in connection with, and substituted for, the trochee. To the classical combination of dactyl and spondee English is obstinately rebellious.
Di-iamb.—A double iamb—short, long, short, long ( ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ). Not wanted in English; and not even expressing, as some of the four-syllable feet do, a quasi-real compound effect.
Dimeter.—A combination of two couples of the same foot, iambic, trochaic, or anapæstic. Thus the ordinary octosyllable is an iambic dimeter, and the familiar swinging four-foot anapæst, a dimeter anapæstic. In ancient prosody, "-meter" was never used in this kind of combination, with reference to single-feet metres, unless these feet were in places specifically different. Thus "hexameter" means a line of six single feet, of which, though the first four may vary, the fifth must normally be a dactyl and the sixth a spondee; "pentameter," a line of five feet, dactyls or spondees, but rigidly distributed in two halves of two and a half feet each. Of late years, in modern English prosody-writing, though fortunately not universally, a most objectionable habit has grown up of calling the heroic line a "pentameter," the octosyllabic iambic a "tetrameter." This is grossly unscholarly, and should never be imitated, for the proper meaning of the terms would be ten feet in the one case, eight in the other.
Dispondee.—Double spondee ( ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ). Even more than the di-iamb, and much more than the ditrochee, this combination is not wanted in English.