UNSTRESSED • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Unstressed

"Unstressed" Quotes from Famous Books

... lines more commonly end-stopped (with distinct pauses at the ends) than is true in good modern poetry. Each line is divided into halves and each half contains two stressed syllables, generally long in quantity. The number of unstressed syllables appears to a modern eye or ear irregular and actually is very unequal, but they are really combined with the stressed ones into 'feet' in accordance with certain definite principles. At least one of the ...

— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... Reino Jano, represent the classical type of the French poets. To be noted, however, is the presence of feminine caesuras. These occur, not theoretically or intentionally, but as a consequence of pronunciation, and are an additional beauty in that they vary the movement of the lines. The unstressed vowel at the hemistich, theoretically elided, is pronounced because of the natural pause intervening between the two parts ...

— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... cases there may even be a third accent if the word is very long; In'-come, val-e-tu'-di-na'-ri-an. This fact arises from the tendency natural to all human speech to take more or less musical forms. The monotony of a series of stressed or of unstressed sounds would be unbearable. The pronunciation of such a series would be a highly artificial and very difficult performance. Correct pronunciation is very greatly concerned with the proper placing of the accent. Indeed the meaning of a familiar word may be quite ...

— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton