Acephalous

The word acephalous - pronounced a-SEF-er-lers, IPA: /ˌeɪ ˈsɛf əl əs/ - is an adjective used to describe a line of verse which has lost its first syllable or syllables, i.e., when the first part of its first metrical foot is missing. For example, an acephalous iambic tetrameter is a line consisting of four iambic feet the first of which has lost its first unstressed syllable - as in these lines from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare (1564-1616). (The stressed syllables of the iambic feet are printed in bold type and the missing syllable of the first foot is marked by a horizontal bar ¯.)

¯ So they loved, as love in twain

¯ Had the essence but in one;

¯ Two distincts, division none;

¯ Number there in love was slain.

(Incidentally it is not always easy to decide whether lines which, like these, scan ¯ ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯ should be described as acephalous iambic tetrameters or as trochaic tetrameters catalectic.)

An acephalous line may be part of the regular metrical scheme of a poem - as with the lines already quoted - or it may occur as a variation on the poem's regular metrical scheme. For example, in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) the four-line stanzas normally have four iambic feet in the first and third lines and three iambic feet in the second and fourth lines. In the following stanza, however, the first and third lines have lost the first unstressed syllable and are therefore acephalous iambic tetrameters. (Again, the stressed syllables of the iambic feet are printed in bold type and the missing syllable of the first foot is marked by a horizontal bar ¯.)

¯ Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

¯ Water, water, everywhere

Nor any drop to drink.

The adjective acephalous comes from the Greek word akephalos (ακεφαλος), which means: 'without a head', or 'without a beginning'. It has a more literal use in biology, where some primitive organisms, or genetic malformations of advanced organisms, may be acephalous - without heads - and in political history, where some anarchic organisations my be without a headman or central ruling principle, acephalous.