logaoedic

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Literally, prose-poetic; in ancient prosody, noting a variety of trochaic or iambic verse in which dactyls are combined with trochees or anapests with iambi: so called because this apparent irregularity seems to approach the non-observance of metrical laws characteristic of prose. These dactyls and anapests are not, however, full dactyls or anapests of four times or moræ, but cyclic dactyls or anapests of only three times, equivalent therefore in measure to trochees or iambi. A single long syllable is also used in some places in several forms of logaœdic verse to represent a complete foot. This long is equal not to two but to three shorts, and is therefore equivalent to a trochee. Irrational longs—that is, longs reduced to the value of a short—also occur in the theses. A basis sometimes precedes the series. Recent metricians use the epithet logaœdic of mixed meters (see mixed) in general. Ancient writers classed many logaœdic meters as Ionic, epionic, choriambic, epichoriambic, or antispastic. Among the more familiar logaœdic meters are the Glyconic, Pherecratic, Asclepiadic, Sapphic, and Alcaic. See basis, 9, and cyclic, 3.
2. n. A verse of the character defined above.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. (Gr. Pros.) Composed of dactyls and trochees so arranged as to produce a movement like that of ordinary speech.