Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • etc. Same as anapest, etc., with Latin æ retained.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • Same as anapest, anapestic.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a metrical unit with unstressed-unstressed-stressed syllables

Etymologies

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Examples

  • And in this way he made that sort of anapaest which is called the Aristophanic anapaest.

    The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 Marcus Tullius Cicero

  • Again, Pheneos is a dactyl in lxviii. 111, while Satrachus is an anapaest in xcv.

    Poems and Fragments 2006

  • In order to deal with English verse, you need to talk about only five feet: the iambus, the trochee, the anapaest, the dactyl, and the spondee.

    The Strange Case of Pushkin and Nabokov Wilson, Edmund 1965

  • Upon being challenged to read Eugene Onegin aloud, he started to do this with great gusto, garbling every second word and turning Pushkin's iambic line into a kind of spastic anapaest with a lot of jaw-twisting haws and rather endearing little barks that utterly jumbled the rhythm and soon had us both in stitches.

    Letters: the Strange Case of Nabokov and Wilson Nabokov, Vladimir 1965

  • Again, _Pheneos_ is a dactyl in lxviii. 111, while _Satrachus_ is an anapaest in xcv.

    The Poems and Fragments of Catullus Gaius Valerius Catullus

  • In the latter form it was also the chief dance of the Locrians, the step being called anapaest.

    Critical and Historical Essays Lectures delivered at Columbia University Edward MacDowell 1884

  • The singers have been induced to make their own selections, and put forward, as Mr. Browning says, their best foot, anapaest or trochee, or whatever it may be.

    Letters on Literature Andrew Lang 1878

  • [14] In the Greek, however short the metre and however long the ode, there is no weariness from monotony; for the interchange of anapaest, dactyl, and spondee, in the lines of from only four to six syllables each, makes a constant and pleasing variety.

    Songs and Hymns of the Earliest Greek Christian Poets 1808-1896 1876

  • The skilful application of the anapaest for the production of the brilliant gallop of 'Lochinvar' has been equalled only by Scott himself in his 'Bonnets o' Bonnie Dundee. '

    Marmion Walter Scott 1801

  • Every boy or girl finds the metre imperfect, but the pedant comes to its defence with a tribrachys or an anapaest, and sets it right at once by applying to one language the rules of another.

    Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies Samuel Johnson 1746

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