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.

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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

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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

It was while there that Hölderlin as a boy of seventeen first made use of the Alcaic measure in which he subsequently wrote so many of his poems.

From Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry by Braun, Wilhelm Alfred

Statius, whose hendecasyllables are passable enough, has given us one Alcaic and one Sapphic ode, which recall the bald and constrained efforts of a modern schoolboy.

From Horace by Martin, Theodore

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 Carruthers, Robert

Thus his great metre, the Alcaic, has a character of stateliness and majesty in addition to the energy and impetus originally imparted to it by Alcaeus.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 13, Slice 6 "Home, Daniel" to "Hortensius, Quintus" 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 Saintsbury, George