Iambic pentameter is made up of five such pairs of short/long, or unstressed/stressed, syllables.
Iambic pentameter is one of many meters used in poetry and drama.  It describes a particular rhythm that the words establish in each  line. That rhythm is measured in small … groups of syllables; these  small groups of syllables are called feet. The word iambic  describes the type of foot that is used. Iambic pentameter is a line that has ten syllables and follows a pattern of unstressed-stressed. The definition can be clearly understood from the name of the meter itself. Iambic refers to the type of foot that is used, which is one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable and pentameter refers to the fact that a line of the verse has five feet. An iambic pentameter has ten syllables with five pairs of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables.  An unstressed/stressed foot is known as an iamb. That’s where the term iambic comes from. Pentameter is simply penta, which means 5, meters. So a line of poetry written in pentameter has 5 feet, or 5 sets of stressed and unstressed syllables. In basic iambic pentameter, a line would have 5 feet of iambs, which is an unstressed and then a stressed syllable. For example: If you would put the key inside the lock. This line has 5 feet, so it’s written in pentameter Iambic Pentameter Definition. In a line of poetry, an iamb is a foot or beat consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, or a short syllable followed by a long syllable, according to FreeDictionary.com. An example is the word comPLETE. FreeDictionary.com defines pentameter as a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet. When put together, iambic pentameter may be defined as a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet where each foot consists of an unstressed syllable and a stressed syllable. Understanding Iambic Pentameter. When we speak, our syllables are either stressed (stronger emphasis) or unstressed (weaker emphasis). For example, the word remark consists of two syllables. Re is the unstressed syllable, with a weaker emphasis, while mark is stressed, with a stronger emphasis. In poetry, a group of two or three syllables is referred to as a foot. A specific type of foot is an iamb. A foot is an iamb if it consists of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, so the word remark is an iamb. Pent means five, so a line of iambic pentameter consists of five iambs – five sets of unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables Iambic pentameter refers to a poetry line that includes a rhythmic flow of words through the alternate stressing and un-stressing of syllables. In poetry, syllables are often referred to as “feet”. “Iamb” is considered a type of “foot” and when five of these are used in one line, they are referred to as being in a “pentameter”. “Iambs” basically contain a pair of syllables with one of them stressed during pronunciation. Using iambic pentameter basically makes an alternating stress of the syllables contained in the five words or “iambs”. The words used for each line are carefully chosen to follow the pattern of alternating stresses in each syllable in terms of pronunciation. Shakespeare's sonnets are written predominantly in a meter called iambic pentameter, a rhyme scheme in which each sonnet line consists of ten syllables. The syllables are divided into five pairs called iambs or iambic feet.  Iambic pentameter is a commonly used type of metrical line in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm that the words establish in that line, which is measured in small groups of syllables called  feet . A line of iambic pentameter is made up of five such pairs of short/long, or unstressed/stressed, syllables. Iambic rhythms come relatively naturally in English. Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry; it is used in many of the major English poetic forms, including blank verse, the heroic couplet, and some of the traditional rhymed stanza forms. William Shakespeare used iambic pentameter in his plays and sonnets
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what is iambic pentameter