Term	Pronunciation	Definition
fable		A poetic story that illustrates a moral or teaches a lesson, usually in which animals or inanimate objects are represented as characters. (Compare allegory, aphorism, apologue, didactic poetry, epigram, gnome, proverb)
fabliau	FAB-lee-oh	A ribald and often cynical tale in verse, especially popular in the Middle Ages. Boccaccio's Decameron, Balzac's Droll Stories and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales contain examples of fabliaux. (See jongleur, trouvere)
facetiae	fuh-SEE-shee-uh	Witty or humorous writings or remarks.
feminine ending		An extra unaccented syllable at the end of an iambic or anapestic line of poetry, often used in blank verse, for example: To be | or not | to be, | that is | the ques | tion (Compare anacrusis)
feminine rhyme		A rhyme occurring on an unaccented final syllable, as in dining and shining or motion and ocean. Feminine rhymes are double or disyllabic rhymes and are common in the heroic couplet, as in the opening lines of Goldsmith's Retaliation: A Poem: Of old, when Scarron his companions invited Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united, (Contrast masculine rhyme)
fescennine verses	FEH-suh-neen	Poetry of a personal nature, lacking moral or sexual restraints, commonly extemporized at rustic weddings in Fescennia, Rome and other ancient Italian cities. (See also epithalamium, prothalamium)
figure of speech		A mode of expression in which words are used out of their literal meaning or out of their ordinary use in order to add beauty or emotional intensity or to transfer the poet's sense impressions by comparing or identifying one thing with another that has a meaning familiar to the reader. Some important figures of speech are: simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole and symbol. NOTE: Some rhetoricians have classified over 200 separate figures of speech, but many are so similar that differences of interpretation often make their classification an arbitrary judgement. How they are classified, or "labeled", however, is secondary to the importance of construing their effect correctly. NOTE: Figures of speech are also a means of concentration; they enable the poet to convey an image with the connotative power of a few words, where a great many would otherwise be required. (See also trope)
foot		A unit of rhythm or meter, the division in verse of a group of syllables, one of which is long or accented. For example, the line, "The boy | stood on | the burn | ing deck," has four iambic metrical feet. The fundamental components of the foot are the arsis and the thesis. The most common poetic feet used in English verse are the iamb, anapest, trochee, dactyl and spondee, while in classical verse there are 28 different feet. The other metrical feet are the amphibrach, antibacchius, antispast, bacchius, choriamb, cretic, diiamb, dispondee, dochmius, molossus, proceleusmatic, pyrrhic and tribrach, plus two variations of the ionic, four variations of the epitrite, and four variations of the paeon. The structure of a poetic foot does not necessarily correspond to word divisions, but is determined in context by the feet which surround it. NOTE: A line of verse may or may not be written in identical feet; variations within a line are common. Consequently, the classification of verse as iambic, anapestic, trochaic, etc., is determined by the foot which is dominant in the line. NOTE: To help his young son remember them, Coleridge wrote the poem, Metrical Feet. (See dipody) (See also scan, scansion)
form		The arrangement, manner or method used to convey the content, such as free verse, ballad, haiku, etc. In other words, the "way-it-is-said." NOTE: Form provides a "pattern" for the poem, but is usually most effective when it is the least obvious. NOTE: The form of a poem which follows a set pattern of rhyme scheme, stanza form and refrain (if there is one), is called a fixed form, examples of which include: ballade, limerick, pantoum, rondeau, sestina, sonnet, triolet and villanelle. (Compare diction, motif, persona, style, texture, tone)
fourteener		An iambic line of fourteen syllables, or seven feet, widely used in English poetry in the middle of the 16th Century. (See heptameter, poulter's measure, septenarius)
free verse		A fluid form which conforms to no set rules of traditional versification. The free in free verse refers to the freedom from fixed patterns of meter and rhyme, but writers of free verse employ familiar poetic devices such as assonance, alliteration, imagery, caesura, figures of speech etc., and their rhythmic effects are dependent on the syllabic cadences emerging from the context . The term is often used in its French language form, vers libre. Walt Whitman's By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame is an example of a poem written in free verse. NOTE: Although as ancient as Anglo-Saxon verse, free verse was first employed "officially" by French poets of the symbolistic movement and became the prevailing poetic form at the climax of romanticism. In the 20th century it was the chosen medium of the imagists and was widely adopted by American and English poets. NOTE: The one characteristic that distinguishes free verse from rhythmical prose is that free verse has line breaks which divide the content into uneven rhythmical units. (See also polyphonic prose, polyrhythmic verse)

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