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

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

He went on to speak of his “Experiments in Quantity,” and in particular of the Alcaic Ode to Milton, beginning: O mighty-mouth’d inventor of harmonies.

From Tennyson and His Friends by Various

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 Symonds, John Addington

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

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