lastfoot

Lastfoot is a term that appears in only a few specialized contexts and is not widely defined in major dictionaries. In scholarship on poetry and prosody, the phrase is sometimes used informally to designate the final foot of a line of verse. When employed this way, it refers to the last metrical unit that completes the line, with its type (for example iambic, trochaic, anapestic) and its stress pattern contributing to the line's cadence and closure. Analysts may discuss how the last foot interacts with caesura, enjambment, or rhyme schemes to determine the line’s effect.

Beyond literary use, lastfoot is not established as a standard technical term in other disciplines. Some authors employ it as a figurative or coined label for a concluding component of a process, artifact, or narrative in a particular work, but such usage is idiosyncratic rather than universal. Because of its rarity, readers encountering lastfoot should rely on the surrounding text for definition.

See also: foot (prosody), metrical foot, caesura, rhyme, meter.