feminine ending

feminine ending

noun
1.
Prosody. 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.
Grammar. a termination or final syllable marking a feminine word: In Latin is a feminine ending for the ablative case in the singular.

Origin:
1890–95
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Feminine ending is always a great word to know.
So is doohickey. Does it mean:
a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
Collins
World English Dictionary
feminine ending
 
n
prosody an unstressed syllable at the end of a line of verse

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia

feminine ending

in prosody, a line of verse having an unstressed and usually extrametrical syllable at its end. In the opening lines from Robert Frost'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 lossOf detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a houseUpon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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