Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Having a metrically complete pattern, especially having the full number of syllables in the final foot. Used of verse.
from The Century Dictionary.
- In prosody, not halting short; complete; having the complete number of syllables in the last foot: as, an acatalectic verse.
- noun A verse which has the complete number of syllables in the last foot.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective (Pros.) Not defective; complete.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective poetry, prosody Designating a line of
verse having the required number ofsyllables in the lastfoot . - noun poetry, prosody A verse which has the complete number of feet and syllables
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective (verse) metrically complete; especially having the full number of syllables in the final metrical foot
- noun (prosody) a line of verse that has the full number of syllables
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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The former is trochaicthe latter is octameter acatalectic, alternating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrameter catalectic.
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With the latter, it has the same kind of verse with its masculine and feminine rhymes and a similar rhythm, the only difference being that the order of the catalectic and acatalectic verses is dissiimilar.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 12: Philip II-Reuss 1840-1916 1913
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He explained to me most seriously the differences between trimeter Iambics when they were catalectic, acatalectic, hypercatalectic.
The Private Life of Henry Maitland Roberts, Morley, 1857-1942 1912
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The value of the suppressed measure would therefore be 2.15, a ratio of acatalectic to elided group of 1.000: 0.581.
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The syncopated measure, like the redundant, bears to the acatalectic group specific relations of duration, accentual stress, and position in the rhythmical sequence.
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In the first place, he broke entirely with alliteration and with any-length lines, composing his poem in a metre which is either a fifteen-syllabled iambic tetrameter catalectic, or else, as the reader pleases, a series of distichs in iambic dimeters, alternately acatalectic and catalectic.
The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) George Saintsbury 1889
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To dwell on their technical excellences (the chief of which is the unerring precision with which the catalectic and acatalectic lines are arranged and interchanged) has a certain air of impertinence about it.
A History of Elizabethan Literature George Saintsbury 1889
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The reason of this unusual rapidity of movement is the unusual character of the eight-syllable verse as acatalectic, almost all other kinds of verse being catalectic on at least one syllable, implying a final pause of corresponding duration.
Confessions of a Book-Lover Maurice Francis Egan 1888
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These characters include the whole time occupied by each verse of the stanza, the relative values of acatalectic and catalectic verses occurring within the same stanza structure, differences in rhythmical melody between the latter forms, the variations of average intensity in the accentual elements of such lines, and a determination of the values of rests of higher and lower degrees -- mid-line, verse, and couplet pauses -- which appear in the various stanza forms, and their relation to other structural elements.
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