Hypercatalexis

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The addition of one or two syllables to the last foot of a verse uncountable

Etymology

Coined in the late 1880s as a back-formation from hypercatalectic, from Latin hypercatalēcticus, from Ancient Greek ὑπερκαταληκτικός (huperkatalēktikós), from ὑπερ- (huper-, “over”) + καταληκτικός (katalēktikós, “incomplete”)

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