Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Lacking one or more syllables, especially in the final foot. Used of verse.
from The Century Dictionary.
- In prosody: Wanting part of the last foot: as, a catalectic line or verse: opposed to acatalectic.
- noun A catalectic verse.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective (Pros.) Wanting a syllable at the end, or terminating in an imperfect foot.
- adjective (Photog. & Chem.) Incomplete; partial; not affecting the whole of a substance.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective poetry Said of a
line with incompletemeter , lacking asyllable at the end or ending with an incompletefoot . - adjective
incomplete ;partial ; not affecting the whole of a substance
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective (verse) metrically incomplete; especially lacking one or more syllables in the final metrical foot
- noun (prosody) a line of verse that lacks a syllable in the last metrical foot
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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But to go on from this, as Dr Guest and some of his followers have done, to the subjection of the whole invaluable vocabulary of classical prosody to a sort of _præmunire_, to hold up the hands in horror at the very name of a tribrach, and exhibit symptoms of catalepsy at the word catalectic -- to ransack the dictionary for unnatural words or uses of words like "catch," and "stop," and
The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) George Saintsbury 1889
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May our canteens be festooned with canticles, our shoeshops filled with catalectic feet.
People of Britain, it's time to carve a few lines of poetry into your wheelbarrow 2011
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The former is trochaicthe latter is octameter acatalectic, alternating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrameter catalectic.
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The remaining stanzas discard the scheme of triple rhymes in favour of rhymed couplets, while the last two lines use assonance instead of rhyme and are, moreover, catalectic:
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4: Clandestinity-Diocesan Chancery 1840-1916 1913
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The stanza is thus seen to comprise three tetrameter trochaic catalectic verses.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 11: New Mexico-Philip 1840-1916 1913
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With the latter, it has the same kind of verse with its masculine and feminine rhymes and a similar rhythm, the only difference being that the order of the catalectic and acatalectic verses is dissiimilar.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 12: Philip II-Reuss 1840-1916 1913
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He explained to me most seriously the differences between trimeter Iambics when they were catalectic, acatalectic, hypercatalectic.
The Private Life of Henry Maitland Roberts, Morley, 1857-1942 1912
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The last foot is obviously incomplete or _catalectic_.
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Mr. Swinburne to those of Mr. Patmore, in which stateliness of contemplation and a peculiar austerity of tenderness find their expression in odes of iambic cadence, the melody of which depends, not in their headlong torrent of sound, but in the cunning variation of catalectic pause.
Victorian Songs Lyrics of the Affections and Nature Edmund Henry Garrett 1891
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In the first place, he broke entirely with alliteration and with any-length lines, composing his poem in a metre which is either a fifteen-syllabled iambic tetrameter catalectic, or else, as the reader pleases, a series of distichs in iambic dimeters, alternately acatalectic and catalectic.
The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) George Saintsbury 1889
brtom commented on the word catalectic
A catalectic tetrameter of iambs marching.
Joyce, Ulysses, 3
December 30, 2006