# Octosyllable

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The **octosyllable** or **octosyllabic verse** is a [line](/source/Meter_(poetry)) of verse with eight [syllables](/source/Syllable). It is equivalent to [tetrameter](/source/Tetrameter) verse in [trochees](/source/Trochee) in languages with a [stress accent](/source/Stress_accent). Its first occurrence is in a 10th-century Old French saint's legend, the *[Vie de Saint Leger](/source/Leodegar)*;[1] another early use is in the early 12th-century Anglo-Norman *[Voyage de saint Brendan](/source/Brendan_the_Navigator)*.[2] It is often used in [French](/source/French_poetry), [Italian](/source/Italian_poetry), [Spanish](/source/Spanish_poetry) and [Portuguese](/source/Portuguese_poetry) poetry. While commonly used in [couplets](/source/Couplet), typical [stanzas](/source/Stanza) using octosyllables are: [décima](/source/D%C3%A9cima), some [quatrains](/source/Quatrain), [redondilla](/source/Redondilla).

In Spanish verse, an octosyllable is a line that has its seventh syllable stressed, on the principle that this would normally be the penultimate syllable of a word (*Lengua Castellana y Literatura*, ed. Grazalema Santillana. El Verso y su Medida, p. 46). If the final word of a line does not fit this pattern, the line could have eight or seven or nine syllables (as normally counted), thus –

- 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / Gra/NA/da
- 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / Ma/DRID
- 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / MA/(la)/ga

In [Medieval French literature](/source/Medieval_French_literature), the octosyllable [rhymed](/source/Rhyme) [couplet](/source/Couplet) was the most common verse form used in verse [chronicles](/source/Chronicle), [romances](/source/Romance_(heroic_literature)) (the *romans*), *[lais](/source/Lai_(poetic_form))* and *dits*. The meter reached Spain in the 14th century, although commonly with a more varied rhyme scheme than the couplet. The Anglo-Norman poets from the 12th-13th centuries brought the French octosyllablic verse to England and influenced the 4 stress tetrameter verse used in narration (as in [Chaucer](/source/Chaucer)).[1]

Octosyllabic verse is traditional in many Slavic languages; it goes back at least to the [Common Slavic](/source/Common_Slavic) period, and [Martin West](/source/Martin_Litchfield_West) argues that it is descended from the same [Indo-European](/source/Proto-Indo-Europeans) [oral](/source/Oral_poetry) meter as the [Vedic](/source/Vedic) [Gāyatrī](/source/Vedic_metre#G%C4%81yatr%C4%AB_metre) and the Ancient Greek [Glyconic](/source/Glyconic) and Telesillean meters.[3]

## See also

- [meter (poetry)](/source/Meter_(poetry))
- [hexasyllable](/source/Hexasyllable) – 6 syllable line
- [decasyllable](/source/Decasyllable) – 10 syllable line
- [hendecasyllable](/source/Hendecasyllable) – 11 syllable line
- [dodecasyllable](/source/Dodecasyllable) – 12 syllable line

## References

1. Cushman, Stephen; Cavanagh, Clare; Ramazani, Jahan; Paul Rouzer (2012). ["Octosyllable"](https://books.google.com/books?id=uKiC6IeFR2UC&pg=PA970). *The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics*. 4 ed. Princeton UP. pp. 970–71. ISBN 9781400841424. Retrieved 2 May 2013.

1. Jongen, Ludo; Szirmai, Julia; Winkelman, Johan H. (2013). *De reis van Sint Brandaan* (in Dutch). Hilversum: Verloren. p. 12. ISBN 9789087041373.

1. West, M. L. (1973). "Indo-European Metre". *Glotta*. [JSTOR 40266268](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40266268)

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