Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A metrical foot composed of two unaccented syllables followed by one accented one, as in the word seventeen.
- noun A metrical foot in quantitative verse composed of two short syllables followed by one long one.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In prosody, a foot consisting of three syllables, the first two short or unaccented, the last long or accented: the reverse of the dactyl.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Pros.) A metrical foot consisting of three syllables, the first two short, or unaccented, the last long, or accented (˘ ˘ -); the reverse of the
dactyl . In Latin dĕ-ĭ-tās, and in English in-ter-vene", are examples of anapests. - noun A verse composed of such feet.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun US, prosody A metrical
foot consisting of threesyllables , two short and one long (e.g the word "velveteen "). - noun US, prosody A fragment, phrase or line of poetry or verse using this meter; e.g. “Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did NOT!” (Dr Seuss aka Theodor Geisel).
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a metrical unit with unstressed-unstressed-stressed syllables
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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That verse wherein the accent falls on every third syllable, may be called trisyllabic verse; it is equivalent to what has been called anapestic; and we will still use the term anapest to express two unaccented and one accented syllable.
Miscellany 1784
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The emphasis of the rhyme, coming as it does after the rushing anapest, is to settle the word ‘knew’ much deeper in the voice than the word ‘yew.’
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The first two iambs are followed by something almost like a qualitative anapest (in English we do meter based on stress, and here the stress falls on the first syllable of grandeur; in Greek and Latin the stress is based on quality = the length of the syllable, and you can see how much longer than ‘with’ and ‘the’ is the ‘grand’ of grandeur).
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A limerick traditionally uses anapest meter -- that is, with metrical feet consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable, and with three feet each for lines 1, 2, and 5, and two feet each for lines 3 and 4.
Florida Keys Swordfish Limerick Contest John Merwin 2008
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With a polished iamb, trochee, dactyl, amphibrach and anapest.
Archive 2009-06-01 Eric Dickens 2009
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The chapter then proceeds to consider the four most common metrical patterns: in relative order of importance, the iambic, the anapest, the trochee and the dactyl.
THE PROSODY HANDBOOK: A GUIDE TO POETIC FORM by ROBERT BEUM & KARL SHAPIRO EILEEN 2009
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If she was going to be honest, she had loved the way Seth knew what an anapest was, and a canzone.
The Tenth Circle Picoult, Jodi, 1966- 2006
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If she was going to be honest, she had loved the way Seth knew what an anapest was, and a canzone.
The Tenth Circle Jodi Picoult 2006
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For the next seven years, despite repeated strokes, my grandfather worked at a small desk, piecing together the legendary fragments into a larger mosaic, adding a stanza here, a coda there, soldering an anapest or an iamb.
Middlesex Eugenides, Jeffery 2002
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Isocrates about thirty verses, most of them senarian, and some of them anapest, which in prose have a more disagreeable effect than any others.
Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. Marcus Tullius Cicero
hernesheir commented on the word anapest
US Railway Association, Standard Cipher Code, 1906: Railway telegraphers' shorthand meaning "Has not been allowed (to)".
January 19, 2013
alexz commented on the word anapest
listed in xkcd's 1383th comic.
I had to look this one up.
June 18, 2014