What does "amphibrach" mean?

A metrical foot in ancient Greek or Latin consisting of two short syllables surrounding one long one (e.g. amāta).

What is a synonym for "amphibrach"?

Common synonyms include: accent, anapest, beat, cadence, caesura, colon.

//ˈam.fɪ.bɹak// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A metrical foot in ancient Greek or Latin consisting of two short syllables surrounding one long one (e.g. amāta).
2
a metrical unit with unstressed-stressed-unstressed syllables (e.g., ‘remember’) wordnet
3
A metrical foot in modern prosody, consisting of three syllables, the middle one of which is stressed (e.g. Jamaica).
"Then Banoffsky launched into Glinka's great amphibrachs [...]: Subside, agitation of passion!"

"Then Banoffsky launched into Glinka's great amphibrachs [...]: Subside, agitation of passion!"

From Latin amphibrachys, from Ancient Greek ἀμφίβραχυς (amphíbrakhus, “short at both ends”), from ἀμφί (amphí) + βραχύς (brakhús, “short”).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.