anapaest
Sign in to saveAlso known as anapest, antidactylus, ◡◡–
An anapaest (; also spelled anapæst or anapest, also called antidactylus) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. It may be seen as a reversed dactyl. This word comes from the Greek , anápaistos, literally "struck back" and in a poetic context "a dactyl reversed".
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Encyclopedic overview
8 sectionsContents
- Examples
- Trimeter
- Tetrameter
- Hexameter
- Heptameter
- Comic poetry
- See also
- References
An anapaest (; also spelled anapæst or anapest, also called antidactylus) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. It may be seen as a reversed dactyl. This word comes from the Greek , anápaistos, literally "struck back" and in a poetic context "a dactyl reversed".
Because of its length and the fact that it ends with a stressed syllable and so allows for strong rhymes, anapaest can produce a very rolling verse, and allows for long lines with a great deal of internal complexity.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “anapaest” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.