Iamb, iambus
A metrical foot consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. This is the rhythm of ordinary English speech. Examples of iambic words are "divide" and "deter." Gerard Manley Hopkins' "The Windhover" begins deceptively with a line that appears to have five iambic feet, "I caught this morning morning's minion, king-", but that scans differently in his own sprung rhythm. A double foot termed the di-iamb / ~ ' ~ ' / was common in Classical Greek and Latin.