How to Use pentameter in a Sentence

pentameter

noun
  • That, too, is pentameter, plain as plain can be.
    — Alex Abramovich, New Yorker, 26 Dec. 2025
  • By and large, Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter.
    — Rebecca Coffey, Forbes.com, 8 Sep. 2025
  • Nobles, for instance, tend to speak in iambic pentameter, while commoners speak in prose.
    — Isis Davis-Marks, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Oct. 2020
  • Shakespeare’s iambic pentameters were sacred, precise as a page of music, never to be broken mid-line, even at a full stop.
    — The Economist, 21 Sep. 2017
  • Washington is no stranger to iambic pentameter, but his Macbeth is more piercing in his sighs than in his utterances.
    — Los Angeles Times, 14 Jan. 2022
  • Without Marlowe, there might have been no iambic pentameter, and no soliloquies.
    — Isaac Butler, The Atlantic, 3 Nov. 2025
  • Delivering lines about the two devoted coalitions in iambic pentameter is truly a standout of the season.
    — Alamin Yohannes, EW.com, 22 Apr. 2021
  • The usually reliable Gnapp makes for a blocky Claudius, chugging through lines as if buoyed by the iambic pentameter and nothing more.
    — Lily Janiak, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 June 2018
  • What’s exciting about a production like this is to see the ways in which wordless movement can do the work here that iambic pentameter does in another context.
    — Lily Janiak, San Francisco Chronicle, 26 Apr. 2023
  • The language itself remained the same, maintaining Shakespeare's use of iambic pentameter.
    — Junette Reyes, Sun-Sentinel.com, 28 Apr. 2017
  • Even Pope settled for iambic pentameter when translating Homer, rather than the epics’ dactylic hexameter.
    — William Logan, New York Times, 11 Apr. 2025
  • Aside from being a nice, tongue-twisting bit of iambic pentameter, What makes lymphatic massage therapy so special?
    — Carly Mallenbaum, USA TODAY, 31 Jan. 2020
  • For Rush, the process was not dissimilar from that of tackling the density of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter.
    — vanityfair.com, 24 Apr. 2017
  • Wearing sweatpants, doing acting exercises like trilling my tongue and learning iambic pentameter.
    — Roberta Naas, Forbes, 21 Apr. 2021
  • Mr Kinnear’s goal is to make the iambic pentameter seem as vernacular as artificial.
    — The Economist, 15 Mar. 2018
  • But then the poet, Guillermo Vilas, found the pentameter of his game, to the cheers of those who obviously preferred the poet to the punk.
    — Dave Anderson, New York Times, 26 Aug. 2017
  • The book received plenty of praise, but many critics missed the point, describing Betts’s work as raw and gritty, when the title poem is entirely in blank verse — unrhymed iambic pentameter.
    — Adam Bradley, New York Times, 4 Mar. 2021
  • Elizabethan iambic pentameter has been trimmed, while keeping the songs intact and leaving room for spontaneous actor-audience interactions.
    — Los Angeles Times, 13 Nov. 2021
  • This man has arrived with actual bits and jokes and a series of riddles written in iambic pentameter to introduce The Tight Ass Party.
    — Ali Barthwell, Vulture, 8 Sep. 2021
  • At a time when Sexton was giving readings accompanied by a rock band, Bishop was assigning her class exercises in iambic pentameter.
    — Adam Davidson, The New Yorker, 6 Mar. 2017
  • A couple of regional and college theaters are ending their regular seasons in April with Shakespeare plays, and a couple of other events are on tap to keep the iambic pentameter flowing.
    — Christopher Arnott, Hartford Courant, 20 Apr. 2025
  • From there, Bartlett uses Shakespearean iambic pentameter to point up the disparity between petty-minded behavior and grandiose dreams of a return to power.
    — David Benedict, Variety, 13 Apr. 2022
  • Elizabeth Marvel as Marc Antony brings down the house with the funeral oration, spicing its pentameter cadence with the gumbo drawl of a southern senator.
    — Jesse Green, New York Times, 9 June 2017
  • Think fast Iambic pentameter this is not, but Carpenter’s schtick of cheeky, PG-13 rhymes showed off a pop star who isn’t afraid to laugh, especially at her own expense.
    — Alex Abad-Santos, Vox, 17 May 2024
  • But all of this was before ChatGPT, which has no trouble with text generation, even with very difficult constraints like rhyming and iambic pentameter.
    — Quanta Magazine, 27 Apr. 2023
  • The first passage is a Spenserian stanza, nine lines long, the last line being an Alexandrine—consisting of six feet, that is, and thus metrically a foot longer than the iambic pentameters that precede it.
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 26 Feb. 2024
  • This Shakespeare engages in a Hamilton-esque rap battle, in iambic pentameter, shouting about the necessity of his verbal dexterity.
    — Eric Thurm, Esquire, 11 July 2017
  • But with Shakespeare, whose characters felt so familiar inside rules of prose and iambic pentameter, Ming-Trent found a poetry partner to hep him through life’s brutalities.
    — David John Chávez, Mercury News, 4 Feb. 2026
  • Poochigian's dexterous iambic pentameter makes this version of the 3rd-century BCE Greek tale a lively, engaging read.
    — The Week Staff, The Week, 5 Dec. 2022
  • Among others, there’s Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Pentametron, a Twitter bot that couples public tweets written in iambic pentameter to create rhyming couplets.
    — Leah Henrickson, Slate Magazine, 29 Aug. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pentameter.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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