noun
- Plural of mora; units of metrical time in phonology and prosody, used to measure syllable weight in languages.
Usage: linguistics; technical term; primarily used in academic and linguistic contexts
Examples
- In Japanese phonology, long vowels are counted as two morae.
- The linguist explained that morae determine stress patterns in certain languages.
- Heavy syllables in Latin poetry typically contain two morae.
- Morae are essential for understanding the metrical structure of classical verse.