what does the word enjambement mean?

Answer 1

you are reading poetry? We are talking about Iambic pentameter: an unrhymed line of five feet in which the dominant accent usually falls on the second syllable of each foot (di dúm), a pattern known as an iamb. The form is very flexible: it is possible to have one or more feet in which the expected order of accent is reversed (dúm di). These are called trochees.

You Question - is what to do at the end of the verse... Enjambement: The effect achieved when the syntax of a line of verse transgresses the limits set by the metre at the end of the verse.

Metre: A regular patterned recurrence of light and heavy stresses in a line of verse. These patterns are given names. Almost all poems deliberately depart from the template established by a metrical pattern for specific effect.

Assessing a poem's metre requires more than just spotting an iambic pentameter or other metrical pattern: it requires you to think about the ways in which a poem departs from its underlying pattern and why. Emotion might force a reverse foot or trochee, or the normal patterns of speech might occasionally cut across an underlying rhythm.

Metre aims for the integrity of the single verse, whereas syntax will sometimes efface that integrity. Thus 'Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side/ As if a voice were in them, the sick sight/ And giddy prospect of the raving stream...'

End-stopping is the alternative to enjambement.

Answer 2

It's from the French word "enjamber," which means to straddle. The root is "jambe" which means leg. The suffix -ment makes it a noun meaning something like the state of straddling. The dictionary definition is "the continuation of a sentence or idea from one line or couplet of a poem to the next."

Answer 3

When the meaning of a line of poetry continues onto the next line. Here is an example from a few lines by W H Auden (the poem is Lullaby):

Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave

The opposite is endstopped where the sentence / meaning stops at the end of the line of poetry...

Answer 4

the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line of verse into the next line without a pause

syntactic- of or pertaining to syntax.
2. consisting of or noting morphemes that are combined in the same order as they would be if they were separate words in a corresponding construction: The word blackberry, which consists of an adjective followed by a noun, is a syntactic compound.

Answer 5

Apparently it means "the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause".