scansion

English

Etymology

From Late Latin scansiōnem, accusative singular of scansiō (“the act of climbing”), from scandō (“I climb”).

Pronunciation

• (UK, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈskæn.ʃən/

Noun

scansion (countable and uncountable, plural scansions)

1. The rhythm or meter of a line or verse.
2. The act of analysing the meter of poetry.

Verb

scansion (third-person singular simple present scansions, present participle scansioning, simple past and past participle scansioned)

1. (of text) Put into a rhythmic form or meter.
   • 2000, Don Pirata, Cark and Moil, →ISBN:

     Many of my doggerels are scansioned from letters I've written to these children while they were incarcerated in those warehouses for the minority nuisance, laughingly called correctional facilities.

   • 2002, Angela Esterhammer, Romantic Poetry, →ISBN, page 448:

     It is “mannered through and through” or, in Karl Kraus's notorious harangue, little more than “scansioned journalism” — an “artful stage-prop in the shopping window of a pastry shop or a feuilleton writer.

   • 2012, Kareen Ror Malone, Stephen R. Friedlander, The Subject of Lacan: A Lacanian Reader for Psychologists, →ISBN, page 181:

     At this time I got up and called the session over, punctuating or scansioning his discourse in order to symbolically communicate to him in action my belief that what had just transpired was genuinely important in the history of his therapy.

2. (by extension) Impose patterns on.
   • 1999, Margit Rowell, Michael Semff, Bice Curiger, Sigmar Polke: Works on Paper 1963-1974, →ISBN, page 27:

     The fine zigzag and diagonal interweavings, the nuances of varying intervals between the scansioned dots, show the enormous time and effort Polke invested in his complex, manual transfer method.

   • 2003, Luigi Zoja, Growth and Guilt: Psychology and the Limits of Development, →ISBN, page 106:

     And it saw the concept of an historical time in linear development as depriving it of the reassuring repetitions of a circular form of chronology that was connected to the seasons and to the cycle of agricultural work; which in turn was scansioned by rituals that reasserted its continuity with the world of myth.

   • 2009, Mathew Kinsella, The California Tales: A Novel, →ISBN:

     Scansioning the walkway face of the garden wall like an unfolding scroll, he strolled south as far as the narrow arched doorway to the belltower. Mad for abstracting patterns and images from the masonry, at first the hues and linear lay-up of the stone wall appeared haphazard as nature.

Related terms

• scan

Translations

the rhythm or meter of a line or verse

• Arabic: العَرُوض m (al-ʕarūḍ)
• French: scansion (fr) f
• German: Skandierung
• Italian: scansione (it) f
• Occitan: escansion f

the act of analysing the meter of poetry

• French: scansion (fr) f
• Italian: scansione (it) f
• Occitan: escansion f
• Portuguese: escansão (pt) f

Anagrams

• Cansinos, Cnossian

French

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

scansion f (plural scansions)

1. scansion (act or instance of scanning poetry)

Related terms

• scander

Further reading

• “scansion”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.