Anapaestic

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    British standard spelling of anapestic.
Adjective
  1. 1
    British standard spelling of anapestic. not-comparable

    "The public has referred the question to Time: the procedure of this great king I venture to describe, from precedents, by an adaptation of some smart anapaestic tetrameters--your anapaest is the foot for satire to halt on, both in Greek and English--which I read about twenty years ago, and with the point of which I was much tickled."

Adjective
  1. 1
    (of a metric foot) characterized by two short syllables followed by a long one wordnet

Example

More examples

"The public has referred the question to Time: the procedure of this great king I venture to describe, from precedents, by an adaptation of some smart anapaestic tetrameters--your anapaest is the foot for satire to halt on, both in Greek and English--which I read about twenty years ago, and with the point of which I was much tickled."

Etymology

From Latin anapaesticus. By surface analysis, anapaest + -ic.

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