feminine ending

1. Pros. an unaccented syllable at the close of a line of poetry, often one that is added to the metrical pattern as an extra syllable.

2. Gram. a termination or final syllable marking a feminine word: In Latin -a is a feminine ending for the ablative case in the singular.

[1890-95]

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▪ prosody

      in prosody, a line of verse having an unstressed and usually extrametrical syllable at its end. In the opening lines from Robert Frost (Frost, Robert)'s poem “Directive,” the fourth line has a feminine ending while the rest are masculine:

Back out of all this now too much for us,

Back in a time made simple by the loss

Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off

Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,

There is a house that is no more a house

Upon a farm that is no more a farm

And in a town that is no more a town.

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