Definition of "iambus" [i•am•bus]

• Variant of iamb. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "That verse wherein the accent is on the even syllables may be called even or parisyllabic verse, and corresponds with what has been called iambic verse; retaining the term iambus for the name of the foot we shall thereby mean an unaccented and an accented syllable."
• "As has already been said, the iambus is the common foot of English verse."
• "Only we must be careful that by "iambus," in English poetry, we _meant_ an unstressed syllable, rather than a short syllable followed by a long one."