substitution, in Greek or Latin prosody, the replacement of a prosodic element that is required or expected at a given place in a given metre by another which is more or less equivalent in temporal quantity. In modern prosody, substitution refers to the use within a metrical series of a foot other than the prevailing foot of the series. A silence may also replace expected sound and occupy the time of a foot or syllable. The early American poet Anne Bradstreet used substitution to great effect in the following lines from “The Author to Her Book”:
I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run’st more hobbling than is meet;
Compare inversion