Choliambic verse (Ancient Greek: χωλίαμβος), also known as limping iambs or scazons or halting iambic,[1] is a form of meter in poetry.
Choliambic verse is sometimes called scazon, or "lame iambic", because it brings the reader down on the wrong "foot" by reversing the stresses of the last few beats.
The basic structure is much like iambic trimeter, except that the last cretic is made heavy by the insertion of a longum instead of a breve.
The Roman poet Catullus' poems 8, 22 and 39 serve as examples of choliambic verse.
In later poets, such as Persius, Martial, and Ausonius, resolution was used more freely, in any of the first four longa, and sometimes the first foot might be an anapaest (u u –).