Alcaic

American  

[al-kay-ik] / ælˈkeɪ ɪk /

adjective

1. pertaining to Alcaeus or to certain meters or a form of strophe or stanza used by, or named after, him.

---

noun

1. Alcaics, Alcaic verses or strophes.

Alcaic British  

/ ælˈkeɪɪk /

adjective

1. of or relating to a metre used by the 7th-century _bc Greek lyric poet Alcaeus, consisting of a strophe of four lines each with four feet

---

noun

1. (usually plural) verse written in the Alcaic form

Etymology

Origin of Alcaic

1620–30; < Late Latin Alcaicus < Greek Alkaïkós, equivalent to Alka ( îos ) Alcaeus + -ikos -ic

---

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Alcaic

He visited it a second time on his return, and in the album of the mountain convent he wrote his famous Alcaic Ode.

From Select Poems of Thomas Gray by Robert Carruthers

It is impossible to say that Sappho invented the Sapphic, or Alcæus the Alcaic: each poet may have been a Vespucci to some precedent Columbus.

From A History of Elizabethan Literature by George Saintsbury

The two last lines of the latter form of the stanza are indeed evidently copied from the Alcaic, with the simple omission of the last syllable of the last line of the original.

From The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace by John Conington

The two Latin metres which I have more than once heard him admire were the Hexameter and the Alcaic.

From Tennyson and His Friends by Various

The external correspondence between this and the Alcaic is considerable; but the brevity of the English measure struck me at once as a fatal obstacle, and I did not try to encounter it.

From The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace by John Conington

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---