Fourteener

In mountaineering terminology in the United States, a fourteener is a mountain that meets or exceeds an elevation of 14,000 feet (4,270 m) above mean sea level. Colorado has the majority of fourteeners in the contiguous United States (53), followed by California, which has the second largest group of such peaks in the lower 48 states (12). Climbing all of Colorado's fourteeners is a popular pastime among peak baggers; another popular target is climbing all of the fourteeners in the contiguous United States. Various ski mountaineers have completed ski descents of all the Colorado fourteeners, and the first attempts are being made to complete ski descents of all U.S. fourteeners.

Topographic elevation is the vertical distance above the reference geoid, a precise mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface. Topographic prominence is the elevation difference between the summit and the highest or key col to a higher summit. Topographic isolation is the minimum great circle distance to a point of higher elevation.

Fourteener (poetry)

A Fourteener, in poetry, is a line consisting of 14 syllables, which are usually made of 7 iambic feet for which the style is also called iambic heptameter. It is most commonly found in English poetry produced in the 16th and 17th centuries. Fourteeners often appear as rhymed couplets, in which case they may be seen as ballad stanza or common metre hymn quatrains in two rather than four lines.

The term may also be used as a synonym for quatorzain, a 14-line poem, such as a sonnet.

Background

Poulter's measure is a meter consisting of alternate Alexandrines combined with Fourteeners, to form a poem of 12 and 14 syllable lines. It was often used in the Elizabethan era. The term was coined by George Gascoigne, because poulters, or poulterers (sellers of poultry), would sometimes give 12 to the dozen, and other times 14 (see also Baker's dozen). When the poulter's measure couplet is divided at its caesurae, it becomes a short measure stanza, a quatrain of 3, 3, 4, and 3 feet. Examples of this form are Nicholas Grimald's A Truelove; Lord Brooke's Epitaph on Sir Phillip Sydney; Nicholas Breton's Phyllis in the Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse.