Alcaic

American  

[al-key-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

Carducci, for example, calls the four Alcaic stanzas in question "una cosellina quasi perfetta," though they contain three third lines like these: Furore militis tremendo....

From Renaissance in Italy: Italian Literature Part 1 (of 2) by John Addington Symonds

‘With the principal lyric metres, the Sapphic and Alcaic, Horace had done what Vergil had accomplished with the dactylic hexameter, carried them to the highest point of which the foreign Latin tongue was capable.’

From Helps to Latin Translation at Sight by Edmund Luce

Somewhat as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave that falls over in the last.

From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward FitzGerald

Gray's Alcaic Ode.—Can any of your readers say whether Gray's celebrated Latin ode is actually to be found entered at the Grande Chartreuse?

From Notes and Queries, Number 24, April 13, 1850 by Various

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