Prosody

Prosody may mean several things:

• Prosody consists of distinctive variations of stress, tone, and timing in spoken language. How pitch changes from word to word, the speed of speech, the loudness of speech, and the duration of pauses all contribute to prosody.
• In linguistics, prosody refers to intonation and vocal stress in speech. See prosody (linguistics).
• In poetry, prosody is also used for the scansion and metrical shape of the lines: see meter in poetry.