Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Verse written in lines of six metrical feet, especially classical verse in which the first four feet of each line are either dactylic or spondaic, the fifth dactylic, and the sixth spondaic.
- noun A single line of such verse.
from The Century Dictionary.
- In prosody, containing or consisting of six measures; having a length of six feet or six dipodies; especially, composed of six feet, of which the first four are dactyls or spondees, the fifth ordinarily a dactyl, sometimes a spondee, and the last a spondee or trochee: as, a hexameter line, verse, or period.
- noun In prosody, a period, line, or verse consisting of six measures.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Having six metrical feet, especially dactyls and spondees.
- noun (Gr. & Lat. Pros.) A verse of six feet, the first four of which may be either dactyls or spondees, the fifth must regularly be a dactyl, and the sixth always a spondee. In this species of verse are composed the Iliad of Homer and the Æneid of Virgil. In English hexameters accent takes the place of quantity.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun countable a
line in apoem havingsix metrical feet - noun uncountable a
poetic metre in which eachline hassix feet
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a verse line having six metrical feet
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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I had toyed with writing a response in hexameter verse, but that would have been pushing it, no?
MIND MELD: The Best Genre Related Books/Films/Shows/Games Consumed In 2008 (Part III) 2008
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As European students learnt Latin, they learnt how to translate Virgil and Homer, how to write imitation verses and how to write in hexameter and with rhyme.
Starting the Young : Kwame Dawes : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007
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I have, accordingly, ventured to elicit the end of a hexameter from the Greek letters of the MS., of which no satisfactory account has been given, and to read _Itaque dixit statim "respublica lege maiestatis_ οὐ σοί κεν ἄρ 'ἶσα μ' ἀφείη (or ἀφιῇ)."
The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order Marcus Tullius Cicero
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He followed her to Switzerland one summer, and all the time that he was dangling after her (a little too conspicuously, I always thought, for a Great Man), he was writing to me about his theory of vowel-combinations -- or was it his experi - ments in English hexameter?
The Muse's Tragedy 1899
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Well might Egbert be proud of his librarian: the first, I believe upon record, who has composed a catalogue [234] of books in Latin hexameter verse: and full reluctantly, I ween, did this librarian take leave of his _Cell_ stored with the choicest volumes -- as we may judge from his pathetic address to it, on quitting England for France!
Bibliomania; or Book-Madness A Bibliographical Romance Thomas Frognall Dibdin 1811
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The poems of Homer have the most perfect metre, the hexameter, which is also called heroic.
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It is called hexameter because each line has six feet: one of these is of two long syllables, called spondee; the other, of three syllables, one long and two short, which is called dactyl.
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In vi. 65 he apologizes for using the pure hexameter, which is found only four times.
The Student's Companion to Latin Authors Thomas Ross Mills
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This Latin hexameter, which is commonly ascribed to Horace, appeared for the first time as an epigraph to President Hénaults Abrégé Chronologique, and in the preface to the third edition of this work Hénault acknowledges that he had given it as a translation of this couplet.
Quotations 1919
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This Latin hexameter, which is commonly ascribed to Horace, appeared for the first time as an epigraph to President Hénaults Abrégé Chronologique, and in the preface to the third edition of this work Hénault acknowledges that he had given it as a translation of this couplet.
Quotations 1919
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