cretic
Sign in to saveAlso known as paeon diagyios, amphimacer
A cretic ( ), also known as an amphimacer ( ) and sometimes paeon diagyios, is a metrical foot containing three syllables: long, short, long (– ᴗ –). In Greek poetry, lines made entirely of cretic feet are less common than other metres. An example is Alcman 58. However, any line mixing iambs and trochees could employ a cretic foot as a transition. In other words, a poetic line might have two iambs and two trochees, with a cretic foot in between.
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A cretic ( ), also known as an amphimacer ( ) and sometimes paeon diagyios, is a metrical foot containing three syllables: long, short, long (– ᴗ –). In Greek poetry, lines made entirely of cretic feet are less common than other metres. An example is Alcman 58. However, any line mixing iambs and trochees could employ a cretic foot as a transition. In other words, a poetic line might have two iambs and two trochees, with a cretic foot in between.
In later poets the cretic foot could be resolved into a paeonic (ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ – or – ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ) or sometimes even five short syllables (ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “cretic” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.