Prosodian

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Someone who studies or is expert in prosody, the patterns of rhythm, stress and intonation in verse and speech
2. A scholar of metrical structure and the sound patterns that govern poetry and spoken language
3. A person skilled in the analysis of meter, stress and intonation within verse or spoken language

Etymology: Prosodian comes from Greek "prosōidia", a term for the accent or tonal stress placed on a syllable in speech, and that word joined "pros-" ("towards, in addition") with "ōidē" ("song, ode"). The Greeks used it for the melodic pitch of spoken language, so the original sense was closer to "sung accent" than to anything about metre. Later grammarians stretched "prosōidia" to cover the whole study of how verse is built from syllables, and the Latin "prosodia" carried that wider meaning into scholarly use. English took the word through Latin and French routes in the early modern period, and "prosodian" was formed from "prosody" with the agentive suffix "-ian," meaning a person who practises or specialises in a field. A "prosodian" is therefore someone who studies the rules of metre, rhythm, and stress in poetry. The noun is uncommon, and most dictionaries record "prosodist" as the more familiar alternative for the same person.

Synonyms: prosodist