Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A pause in a line of verse dictated by sense or natural speech rhythm rather than by metrics.
- n. A pause or interruption, as in conversation: After another weighty caesura the senator resumed speaking.
- n. In Latin and Greek prosody, a break in a line caused by the ending of a word within a foot, especially when this coincides with a sense division.
- n. Music A pause or breathing at a point of rhythmic division in a melody.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. etc. See cesura, cesural, etc.
Wiktionary
- n. A pause or interruption in a poem, music, building or other work of art.
- n. In Classical prosody, using two words to divide a metrical foot.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A metrical break in a verse, occurring in the middle of a foot and commonly near the middle of the verse; a sense pause in the middle of a foot. Also, a long syllable on which the cæsural accent rests, or which is used as a foot.
- n. a pause or interruption (as in a conversation).
WordNet 3.0
- n. a break or pause (usually for sense) in the middle of a verse line
- n. a pause or interruption (as in a conversation)
Etymologies
- Latin caesūra ("cutting, hewing"), from caesus, perfect passive participle of caedō ("I cut down, hew"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin caesūra, a cutting, from caesus, past participle of caedere, to cut off; see kaə-id- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Among occasional variations of the normal strophe as here described may be mentioned the following: The end-rhyme is in a few instances feminine instead of masculine; while on the other hand the ending of the first half-lines is occasionally masculine instead of feminine, that is, the caesura is not "ringing.”
The Nibelungenlied Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original
“Still, he remembers one space offering a welcome caesura from the ormolu and swag: the Blue Room, which the Count used as his personal sitting area.”
“Labor Day," from The Triumph of Achilles, is occasion only to remember her father's death a year ago, which the poet processes conclusively with this profound insight about the length of a human life: "Not a sentence, but a breath, a caesura.”
“Well, there seems to be an intergalactic-sized caesura.”
The Huffington Post: Elizabeth Boleman-Herring: Selling Mother's Louis Vuittons on eBay
“There's a sense of arrival in line seven, but only a moment's hesitation, enacted by the caesura, the full-stop, after "up to the ridge".”
“And a feeble attempt, given the ongoing lack of an irony font, or a signal for a non-grammatical caesura, or an indicator for unusually quiet or calm speech the way we can signal loud and excited speech!”
“It is the transcendental event that starts it all; it is the caesura that defines her heroes and heroines 'lives, the way they conceive of their task in this world and their failure to live.”
The Huffington Post: Carlo Strenger: Nicole Krauss protests against the Weight of Jewish Inheritance
“O" of sheer pre-apostrophic exclamation (at the core of "Lo!" before it) appears to suggest that pure audition might — across the caesura, the epistemological gap itself — become cognition as smoothly as the phonetic ligature at "listen: O" releases the verbal alter ego of "(k) n-ow.”
“Yet the diffusive linked progress of Victorian perfectibility seems instinct there nonetheless, grammatically as well as rhythmically, overriding the caesura and all the other shocks and setbacks of progression, not only in the emphatic glottal ligature of "growing good" but in the double semantic bond of the words.”
“The Flavian dynasty marks a caesura in the history of Roman first ladies.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘caesura’.
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 330 more...
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words 1
Traduce, Ramify, precipitous, rapture, adumbrate, knell, smolder, vagary, choleric, sibylline, hypocritical, jejune and 135 more...
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Words from Blood Meridian
visage, affray, scullery, miasma, mirth, purlieu, tacit, benighted, wickiup, corral, amble, accoutre and 210 more...
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phrontistery - c
from phrontistery.info
caballine, cabas, cable, caboched, cabochon, caboose, cabotage, cabré, cabrie, cabriole, cabriolet, cacaesthesia and 1298 more...
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Prosody
Your terms and additions are welcome.
headless iamb, tailless trochee, dibrach, disyllable, trisyllable, tetrasyllable, pyrrhus, iamb, trochee, choree, choreus, tribrach and 203 more...
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Used
halcyon, ineluctable, inspissated, incarnadine, askance, demur, saltation, requisite, effusive, specious, liminality, indomitable and 114 more...
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Thresholds
we are all just passing through.
(boundaries, portals and liminal spaces/times)cockcrow, interface, thin line, portal, postern, littoral, interstice, port, membrane, skin, crepuscule, dawn and 304 more...
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 503 more...
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from our first lady of letters
verbiage gleaned from perusing joyce carol oates
abstergent, pleroma, atrabilious, uxorious, caesura, knout, dolabriform
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Words that have "ae" or "oe"
Add any words you know that have these letter combinations!
acoelous, cacoethes, aeschylean, aborvitae, phaeochrous, aeneous, algae, aesthetic, aerobics, daedal, vitae, minutiae and 53 more...
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list01
I HEART MYSELF!!!!!!!!!!
clitoridectomy, pneumonoultramicr..., deipnosophist, zenana, quadragintesimal, lampadedromy, fundus, karyokinesis, machicolation, plasmapherisis, entomophagous, oxyopia and 36 more...
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xulilux's list
leviathan, destitute, iapetus, caesura, ineffable, eschew, phosphene, fungible, antediluvian, nomenclature, mottle, europa and 84 more...
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Poetry Terms
April is National Poetry Month. Add your favorite poetry terms to this new list!
alliteration, anapest, alexandrine, caesura, assonance, ballad, blank verse, iamb, conceit, couplet, consonance, dactyl and 30 more...
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Medical terms or linguistic terms?
That's a terrible ablative case. Get me some morpheme, stet!
stet, stat, morpheme, morphine, ablative case, salmonella, morphology, nephrology, alethic modality, anaphoric clitic, bolus, hyperbole and 54 more...
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the beat & the break
words relating to rhythm
syncope, ascensional, sonant, syncopate, assonance, caesura, prosody, modulation, cadence, rhythm, interval, clitter and 34 more...
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theyearofglad's list
Awesome words.
palimpsest, portmanteau, prolix, sycophant, eschew, revenant, haecceity, velleity, equipoise, caesura, soteriology, inchoate and 23 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for caesura.
aarongetsrich 1: in modern prosody : a usually rhetorical break in the flow of sound in the middle of a line of verse
2: Greek & Latin prosody : a break in the flow of sound in a verse caused by the ending of a word within a foot
3: break, interruption
4: a pause marking a rhythmic point of division in a melody
"The words are normal Law & Order words, but you wouldn't know it: Goldblum turns dialogue inside-out with stylized speech and a range of pregnant pauses, looping his eyes around the room with each caesura as if tracking an imagined hummingbird."
--Slate Jun 30, 2009