Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of, relating to, or being a verse form used in Greek and Latin poetry, consisting of strophes having four tetrametric lines.
- n. Verse composed in strophes of four tetrametric lines.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Pertaining to Alcæus, a lyric poet of Mytilene, in Lesbos, who flourished about 600 b. c.
- [lowercase] Pertaining to, of the nature of, or consisting of alcaics: as, an alcaic strophe. See II.
- n. A line written in one of the measures invented by Alcæus. The most important one of these consists of an anacrusis, a trochee, a spondee, and two dactyls. A second consists of a catalectic iambic pentameter, of which the third foot is always a spondee, and the first may be. A third consists of two dactyls followed by two trochees. Two lines of the first, followed by one of the second and one of the third, constitute the alcaic strophe, the commonest arrangement of alcaics. The following is an example of an alcaic strophe:
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Pertaining to Alcæus, a lyric poet of Mitylene, about 6000 b. c.
WordNet 3.0
- n. verse in the meter used in Greek and Latin poetry consisting of strophes of 4 tetrametric lines; reputedly invented by Alcaeus
Etymologies
- Late Latin Alcaicus, of Alcaeus, from Greek Alkaïkos, from Alkaios, Alcaeus. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“It may not, however, be without interest to some of your readers to know, that this elegant "Alcaic" was to be found at the Chartreuse not very long before the outbreak of that great political tempest, proof of which will be found in the following extract taken from the 9th volume of Malte-Brun's”
“Of these, four are in hendecasyllabics, one in the Alcaic and one in the Sapphic stanza.”
“ To reproduce an original Sapphic or Alcaic stanza in blank verse, or in the couplets of Pope, is at once to repel the reader who knows Horace well, and to give the reader who is unacquainted with Latin lyric poetry a totally erroneous conception of the metrical and rhythmical methods of the poet.”
“It would seem, however, that when Professor Conington insisted that an English measure once adopted for the Alcaic must be used for every ode in which Horace employed the stanza just named, he went far toward hampering the translator, who, despite his proneness to offend, has his rights.”
“What he knew about comic tetrameter was at my service, and in a short time I knew, as I imagined, almost all that he did about Minor Ionic, Sapphic, and Alcaic verse.”
“Sappho invented the Sapphic, or Alcæus the Alcaic: each poet may have been”
“Rhyme became by degrees an invariable or almost invariable accompaniment, and while quantity, strictly speaking, almost disappeared (some will have it that it quite disappeared from French), a syllabic uniformity more rigid than any which had prevailed, except in the case of lyric measures like the Alcaic, became the rule.”
The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of European Literature, vol. II)
“Statius, whose hendecasyllables are passable enough, has given us one Alcaic and one Sapphic ode, which recall the bald and constrained efforts of a modern schoolboy.”
“It may be true that Horace himself does not invariably suit his metre to his subject; the solemn Alcaic is used for a poem in dispraise of serious thought and praise of wine; the Asclepiad stanza in which Quintilius is lamented is employed to describe the loves of Maecenas and Licymnia.”
“The two last lines of the latter form of the stanza are indeed evidently copied from the Alcaic, with the simple omission of the last syllable of the last line of the original.”
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