If you’ve come across the word “nometre” and wondered whether it’s an official poetry term you somehow missed in school, here’s the short answer: it isn’t, at least not in any dictionary or literary reference. What it points to, though, is a real and genuinely interesting question that poets and readers run into all the time: can a poem rhyme without following a set meter? It absolutely can, and there’s a whole tradition of poetry built around exactly that idea. This breaks down what that kind of verse actually is, what to call it properly, and how to recognize (or write) it yourself.

First, What “Nometre” Seems to Mean

Read literally, “nometre” is a mashup of “no” and “metre” (the British spelling of meter). Online, the word gets used loosely to describe poems that have a clear rhyme scheme but don’t lock into a consistent metrical pattern, meaning the stressed and unstressed syllables don’t repeat in a predictable rhythm the way they do in something like iambic pentameter. That’s a reasonable idea to want a name for. It’s just not one that poetry scholars, style guides, or literary glossaries actually use. If you search for it expecting a Poetry Foundation-style definition, you won’t find one, because the accepted terminology already covers this territory, just under different names.

Meter, Rhyme, and Why They’re Not the Same Thing

It helps to separate two things people often lump together:

• Rhyme is about sound matching at the ends of lines (or sometimes within them). Cat/hat, moon/June, that kind of thing.
• Meter is about rhythm, specifically, a repeating pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables across a line, like the da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM of iambic pentameter.

A poem can have one without the other. Free verse famously has neither. Traditional formal poetry, like a Shakespearean sonnet, usually has both. But there’s a whole middle category: poems that rhyme confidently while ignoring strict meter entirely. That middle category is what “nometre” is informally pointing at.

What This Kind of Poetry Is Actually Called

There isn’t one single official name for “rhymed, unmetered verse” as a category, but a few real, well-documented terms describe the techniques that live inside it:

Accentual Verse

This is verse where the poet counts stresses per line, not syllables, and doesn’t worry about which unstressed syllables fall where. Two lines can have wildly different syllable counts and still “match” as long as the number of strong beats lines up. Most nursery rhymes work this way. “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” keeps roughly the same number of stresses per line while the syllable count drifts around underneath it. Accentual verse traces back to Old English poetry, including Beowulf, and Anglo-Saxon poets built entire rules around alliteration and a mid-line pause rather than a fixed metrical foot.

Sprung Rhythm

Coined and popularized by the 19th-century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, sprung rhythm counts only stressed syllables per line and lets any number of unstressed syllables surround them, closer to how people actually talk. It reads as rougher and more unpredictable than traditional meter, on purpose. Hopkins used it precisely because standard iambic patterns felt too smooth and artificial for what he wanted his poems to do.

Rhymed Free Verse

Some poets simply write in free verse (no set meter at all) while still choosing to rhyme, either consistently or in scattered, irregular spots. This isn’t a formal named “system” the way accentual verse or sprung rhythm are; it’s more of a stylistic choice, common in contemporary poetry, song lyrics, and spoken word, where rhyme adds musicality without the poet committing to a strict metrical scaffold.

Loose or Substituted Meter

Sometimes a poem starts in a recognizable meter, like iambic tetrameter, and then the poet deliberately breaks the pattern in places: swapping a stressed syllable for an unstressed one, adding an extra syllable, dropping one. Purists would say that’s technically meter with substitutions rather than “no meter,” but in practice, a poem with heavy, frequent substitutions can feel unmetered to a casual reader even though a formal scan would still find an underlying pattern.

A Quick Way to Tell the Difference Yourself

If you’re looking at a poem and trying to figure out where it lands, try this:

1. Check for rhyme first. Do the line endings (or internal sounds) match in an obvious pattern? Mark it AABB, ABAB, or whatever the pattern turns out to be.
2. Read it out loud. Don’t scan syllable by syllable yet, just listen for a beat.
3. Count stresses per line. If the number of strong beats stays roughly consistent even while syllable counts change, you’re likely looking at accentual verse.
4. Check syllable count too. If both stress count and syllable count line up consistently, that’s traditional accentual-syllabic meter, the “textbook” kind. If neither lines up but the rhyme is still clearly there, you’re looking at rhymed free verse.
5. Look for irregular breaks in an otherwise steady rhythm. If most lines scan cleanly but a few clearly don’t, that’s probably substitution within a formal meter, not the absence of meter.

Why Poets Choose Rhyme Without Fixed Meter

This isn’t a lesser or “easier” version of formal poetry. Poets choose it deliberately, for a few real reasons:

• It sounds closer to natural speech. Strict meter can start to feel sing-song or artificial if overused; dropping the rigid rhythm while keeping rhyme lets the language breathe more like how people actually talk.
• It keeps the musicality of rhyme without boxing in word choice. Writing in strict meter often forces a poet toward specific words just to fill a syllable count. Cutting meter loose gives more room to pick the exact word that’s needed.
• It can create tension or unpredictability. Nursery rhymes use accentual verse partly because it’s catchy and easy to remember, but modern poets also use irregular rhythm to keep a reader slightly off-balance, which can support unsettling or emotionally charged subject matter.
• It suits spoken and performed poetry. Slam poetry and rap lyrics rely heavily on rhyme while rarely locking into textbook meter, since the performance itself, not a printed scan, carries the rhythm.

Examples Worth Knowing

• “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” and most English nursery rhymes: consistent stress count, shifting syllable count, classic accentual verse.
• Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Windhover” and similar poems: sprung rhythm, deliberately irregular and compressed.
• W.H. Auden’s “The Age of Anxiety”: written using an Anglo-Saxon-style accentual measure, showing the technique survived well into 20th-century literary poetry, not just folk rhymes.
• Modern spoken word and hip-hop lyrics: frequently rhyme-heavy with no fixed meter underneath, relying on performed rhythm instead of a printed metrical pattern.

The Bottom Line

“Nometre” isn’t a term you’ll find in a poetry textbook, but the question behind it is a good one, and the answer is yes: poets have been writing rhymed poetry without fixed meter for well over a thousand years, under names like accentual verse, sprung rhythm, and rhymed free verse. If you’re writing your own poetry and want the rhyme without the rhythmic straightjacket, you’re not breaking any rules. You’re working in a tradition that goes back to Beowulf and runs straight through to modern spoken word.

FAQ

Is “nometre” a real literary term?
No, not in any standard dictionary or poetry reference. It’s an informal way some people describe rhymed poetry that doesn’t follow a fixed meter. The actual techniques behind that idea have established names: accentual verse, sprung rhythm, and rhymed free verse.

Can a poem rhyme without any rhythm at all?
Technically, yes, though in practice almost all poetry has some rhythm simply because spoken language does. What “no fixed meter” really means is that the rhythm doesn’t repeat in a predictable, countable pattern the way formal meter does, not that the poem has no sound or flow whatsoever.

What’s the difference between free verse and accentual verse?
Free verse follows no metrical pattern and typically doesn’t rhyme either. Accentual verse keeps a consistent number of stressed syllables per line (its own kind of pattern) while allowing the total syllable count to vary, and it often does rhyme.

Is rhyming without meter harder or easier than formal poetry?
Neither, really; it’s different. Strict meter forces specific word choices to hit a syllable count, which is its own challenge. Rhyming without meter removes that constraint but demands a strong ear for natural rhythm so the poem doesn’t feel choppy or arbitrary.

Do modern poets still use accentual verse or sprung rhythm on purpose?
Yes. Both techniques show up in 20th and 21st century poetry, and elements of accentual rhythm are common in rap and spoken word, even when the writer isn’t consciously naming the technique.