What does 'blank verse' mean?

To understand what we mean by 'blank verse', we must first understand what is meant by metrical feet and a rhyming structure. A metrical foot describes how a line of poetry is measured by the number of and type of syllables in the line. For example, one of the most common measurements is called 'iambic pentametre'. 'Iambic' indicates that two syllables follow the pattern of unstressed to stressed which makes one 'iamb'. However, when there are ten syllables in a line that follow this pattern we call that line an iambic pentametre'. Furthermore, poetry largely follows a rhyming structure such as ABAB, wherein the first and third and the second and fourth lines end with words that rhyme with each other. This is useful to know when explaining what 'blank verse' is. So, 'blank verse' still follows a particular rule on metrical feet, in that there will be a pattern, almost always 'iambic pentametre'. But 'blank verse' does not follow a rhyming rule as all lines are unrhymed. Good examples of this are John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) or William Wordsworth Tintern Abbey (1798). The way i best remember 'blank verse' is to think of it like a novel or short story that can only have a certain amount of syllables in a line.