Poetic contractions are contractions of words found in poetry but not commonly used in everyday modern English. Also known as

elision In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...

or syncope, these contractions are usually used to lower the number of syllables in a particular word in order to adhere to the

meter The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...

of a composition. In languages like French,

removes the end syllable of a word that ends with a vowel sound when the next begins with a vowel sound, in order to avoid

hiatus Hiatus may refer to: *Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure *Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy *''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species ''Hiatus fulvipes'' *Globa ...

, or retain a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel rhythm. Many of these poetic contractions originate from

archaic English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th cen ...

. By the end of the 18th century, contractions were generally looked down upon in standardized formal writing. This development may have been influenced by the publication of

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

's ''

A Dictionary of the English Language ''A Dictionary of the English Language'', sometimes published as ''Johnson's Dictionary'', was published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson. It is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language. T ...

'' (1755).

List of common poetic contractions

References

Writing English language {{Poetry-stub