falling rhythm

noun

, Prosody.

1. a rhythmic pattern created by the succession of metrical feet each of which is composed of one accented syllable followed by one or more unaccented syllables.

Word History and Origins

Origin of falling rhythm¹

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

The Ents began to murmur slowly: first one joined and then another, until they were all chanting together in a long rising and falling rhythm, now louder on one side of the ring, now dying away there and rising to a great boom on the other side.

From Literature

But sometimes it is difficult, if not impossible, to say whether a line or series of lines is in rising or falling rhythm, or what sort of foot is predominant—in other words, what is the formal metrical pattern.

From Project Gutenberg

The last phrase twists and writhes through a series of secondary stresses with an intensity of hatred and bitterness that takes shape in a following series of peculiar falling rhythm waves, each one of which has a foam-covered crest 'white as the bitten lip of hate.'

From Project Gutenberg

For Tennyson's The Higher Pantheism is chiefly in triple falling rhythm, but it begins The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains.

From Project Gutenberg

From Leipzig, L. Fränkel reports the following as given off in a singing tone with falling rhythm:— B a ba, b e be, b i bi—babebi; b o bo, b u bu—bobu; ba, be, bi, bo, bu—babebibobu.

From Project Gutenberg