Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The minimal unit of metrical time in quantitative verse, equal to the short syllable.
  • noun Linguistics A unit of phonological quantity based on both vowel quantity and the occurrence of consonants within a given syllable.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An old game still common in Italy, in which one of the players, after raising the right hand, suddenly lowers it, with one or more of the fingers extended, the other players trying to guess the number so extended.
  • noun In ancient prosody, the unit of time, equivalent to the ordinary or normal short; the semeion or primary time. See time.
  • noun In civillaw, any unjustifiable delay in the fulfilment of an obligation, for which the party delaying is responsible.
  • noun A majestic leguminous tree, Dimorphandra (Mora) excelsa, abounding in Guiana and Trinidad.
  • noun In Greek antiquity, one of the six main divisions of the army of Sparta, commanded by a polemarch.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Rom. & Civil Law) Delay; esp., culpable delay; postponement.
  • noun (Bot.) A leguminous tree of Guiana and Trinidad (Dimorphandra excelsa); also, its timber, used in shipbuilding and making furniture.
  • noun A game of guessing the number of fingers extended in a quick movement of the hand, -- much played by Italians of the lower classes.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun botany A genus of large South American trees.
  • noun Scottish law A delay in bringing a claim.
  • noun poetics A unit used to measure lines and stanzas of poetry.
  • noun phonology A unit of syllable weight used in phonology, by which stress, foot structure, or timing of utterance is determined in some languages (e.g. Japanese).

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin, pause.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

New Latin from a botanical name, perhaps from Tupi.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin mora ("duration of time, delay").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word mora.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Mora: the vowel in a syllable and the consonant at the end. "Poo" has one mora, "put" has two.

    Take a sip 4 or 5 morae, 3 syllables

    Take a cup o' char 7 or 8 morae, 5 syllables

    It's often said that a haiku is comprised of lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables in succession, though the original designation is 5-7-5 morae. The trouble is, in the English writing system, it's hard to feel out the number of morae in a word (often due to the MOP absconding with the codas). However, Japanese kana are organized precisely that way; each little bubble of cute represents one mora.

    Given the moraic ambiguity of English, is there much use in crafting haiku?

    June 23, 2009

  • Usage on lotto.

    December 17, 2009

  • "2. An old game still common in Italy, in which one of the players, after raising the right hand, suddenly lowers it, with one or more of the fingers extended, the other players trying to guess the number so extended." --Cent. Dict.

    May 16, 2011

  • That's actually called morra.

    May 16, 2011

  • the mora of haiku

    August 1, 2013

  • prosody set morae with elegant spartan , complete.

    August 1, 2013