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Mora ( plural moras or morae ) is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing.

As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies.

Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D. McCawley in 1968: a mora is “ Something of which a long syllable consists of two and a short syllable consists of one .” The term comes from the Latin word for “ linger, delay ”, which was also used to translate the Greek word chronos ( time ) in its metrical sense.