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Literature Glossary

Don’t be an oxymoron. Know your literary terms.

Over 200 literary terms, Shmooped to perfection.

Amphibrach

Definition:

You won't see this guy much (he's shy), but an amphibrach is a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed one, followed by an unstressed one: daDUMda. (Not to be confused with ba-dum-ch, though that is an amphibrach of sorts.)

But like we said, the amphibrach is a bit of a recluse, so he's rare in poetry these days.