Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of, relating to, or composed in poetic meter.
- adjective Relating to measurement.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pertaining to or characterized by poetical measure or rhythm; written in verse; metric: as, metrical terms; the metrical psalms.
- Pertaining to measurement, or the use of weights and measures; employed in or determined by measuring: as, a metrical unit, of length or quantity; the metrical systems of the ancients.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Of or pertaining to the meter; arranged in meter; consisting of verses.
- adjective Of or pertaining to measurement; , are
metrical terms; esp., of or pertaining to the metric system.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective relating to
poetic meter - adjective having a regular
rhythm - adjective of or pertaining to
measurement
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective based on the meter as a standard of measurement
- adjective the rhythmic arrangement of syllables
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Apart from the many faults of interpretation all of the metrical translations of the Nibelungenlied here enumerated are defective in one all-important respect: they do not reproduce the poem in its _metrical form_.
The Nibelungenlied Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original George Henry Needler 1914
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To all of them the term metrical prayer rather than hymn should be applied.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability 1840-1916 1913
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ML says: how is this not poetry? is it not “literature in metrical form”?
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One notebook page holds a doodled-in metrical pattern of dactyls, sketched at a diagonal, as if Bishop is quickly taking musical notation or tapping out a whole stanza of scansion:
Paper Trail 2006
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One notebook page holds a doodled-in metrical pattern of dactyls, sketched at a diagonal, as if Bishop is quickly taking musical notation or tapping out a whole stanza of scansion:
Paper Trail 2006
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One notebook page holds a doodled-in metrical pattern of dactyls, sketched at a diagonal, as if Bishop is quickly taking musical notation or tapping out a whole stanza of scansion:
Paper Trail 2006
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That Alroy is written in metrical prose punctuated by what Disraeli called
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One special feature of the present version is the appearance, for the first time, in English metrical shape, preserving the external form and rhyme movement of the originals, of the whole of the poetry with which the Arabic text is so freely interspersed.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Volume I Anonymous 1879
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It abounds in metrical faults, but is occasionally not without some rude spirit and some copiousness of fancy in the variation of the circumstances in the different combats of the hero Walther, prince of Aquitania.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1206
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Properly understood, this that they call the metrical test is doubtless, as they say, the surest or the sole sure key to one side of the secret of Shakespeare; but they will never understand it properly who propose to secure it by the ingenious device of numbering the syllables and tabulating the results of a computation which shall attest in exact sequence the quantity, order, and proportion of single and double endings, of rhyme and blank verse, of regular lines and irregular, to be traced in each play by the horny eye and the callous finger of a pedant.
A Study of Shakespeare Algernon Charles Swinburne 1873
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