a kind of rhythm in English poetry, based on the normal rhythms of speech and made up of a mixture of feet, each foot consisting of either a single stressed syllable or a stressed syllable followed by one or more unstressed syllables
Origin:
term coined by Gerard Manley Hopkins
See sprung rhythm in American Heritage Dictionary 4
noun
A poetic rhythm designed to imitate the rhythm of speech, in which each foot has one stressed syllable, either standing alone or followed by a varying number of unstressed syllables.