Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Verse written in lines of eight metrical feet.
  • noun A single line of such verse.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In prosody, consisting of eight measures (monopodies or dipodies).
  • noun In prosody, a verse or period consisting of eight measures. This word is little used, except in the sense of ‘octapody’ by some writers on modern versification who confound measure with foot.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Pros.) A verse containing eight feet; as, -- Deep" in|to" the | dark"ness | peer"ing, | long" I | stood" there | wond'"ring, | fear"ing.
  • noun (Chem.) A molecule composed of eight monomer units bound to each other, usually in a linear array.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A line of verse containing eight metrical feet

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a verse line having eight metrical feet

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • I wrote tons of sonnets, and got really decent at iambic octameter/pentameter.

    mousepoet Diary Entry mousepoet 2001

  • ” The former is trochaic—the latter is octameter acatalectic, alternating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrameter catalectic.

    The Philosophy of Composition 1914

  • The heptameter is usually divided into a tetrameter and a trimeter; the octameter, into two tetrameters.

    English: Composition and Literature 1899

  • Verses of seven and eight feet are rare; they are called heptameter and octameter, respectively.

    English: Composition and Literature 1899

  • I'm going full-out: trochaic octameter (I am too verbose for iambic pentameter) with internal and cross-line rhyme.

    MentalPolyphonics 2009

  • —“trochaic octameter with lines two and four catalectic.”

    THE ANTHOLOGIST Nicholson Baker 2009

  • —“trochaic octameter with lines two and four catalectic.”

    THE ANTHOLOGIST Nicholson Baker 2009

  • It actually disables any understanding of the poem to say that what he’s doing is trochaic octameter.

    THE ANTHOLOGIST Nicholson Baker 2009

  • It actually disables any understanding of the poem to say that what he’s doing is trochaic octameter.

    THE ANTHOLOGIST Nicholson Baker 2009

  • D.), while the latter kind can naturally only occur in those circles whose couplet forms an octameter (A. E.).

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

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