sprung rhythm Definition

sprung rhythm
noun

1. prosody.
The name given to a type of strong stress meter where each foot (sense 8) has a stressed syllable which either stands alone or has a variable number of unstressed syllables attached to it and which are strung together in an arbitrary fashion so that the rhythm jumps about.

Etymology: 19c: coined by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844‐89) to describe this kind of meter which he was particularly fond of using because he felt it was close to the rhythm of natural speech and also because he associated it with the meter of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English alliterative verse.