Definitions

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

  • noun A metrical foot composed of two unaccented syllables followed by one accented one, as in the word seventeen.
  • noun A metrical foot in quantitative verse composed of two short syllables followed by one long one.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In prosody, a foot consisting of three syllables, the first two short or unaccented, the last long or accented: the reverse of the dactyl.

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

  • noun (Pros.) A metrical foot consisting of three syllables, the first two short, or unaccented, the last long, or accented (˘ ˘ -); the reverse of the dactyl. In Latin dĕ-ĭ-tās, and in English in-ter-vene", are examples of anapests.
  • noun A verse composed of such feet.

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

  • noun US, prosody A metrical foot consisting of three syllables, two short and one long (e.g the word "velveteen").
  • noun US, prosody A fragment, phrase or line of poetry or verse using this meter; e.g. “Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did NOT!” (Dr Seuss aka Theodor Geisel).

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

  • noun a metrical unit with unstressed-unstressed-stressed syllables

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin anapaestus, from Greek anapaistos : ana-, ana- + paiein, pais-, to strike (so called because an anapest is a reversed dactyl); see pau- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin anapaestus, from Ancient Greek ἀνάπαιστος (anapaistos, "struck back”, “reversed"), from ἀνά (ana, "back") + παίω (paiō, "I strike").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word anapest.

Examples

  • That verse wherein the accent falls on every third syllable, may be called trisyllabic verse; it is equivalent to what has been called anapestic; and we will still use the term anapest to express two unaccented and one accented syllable.

    Miscellany 1784

  • The emphasis of the rhyme, coming as it does after the rushing anapest, is to settle the word ‘knew’ much deeper in the voice than the word ‘yew.’

    The Poet Thomas Hardy « Unknowing 2010

  • The first two iambs are followed by something almost like a qualitative anapest (in English we do meter based on stress, and here the stress falls on the first syllable of grandeur; in Greek and Latin the stress is based on quality = the length of the syllable, and you can see how much longer than ‘with’ and ‘the’ is the ‘grand’ of grandeur).

    God’s Grandeur « Unknowing 2010

  • A limerick traditionally uses anapest meter -- that is, with metrical feet consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable, and with three feet each for lines 1, 2, and 5, and two feet each for lines 3 and 4.

    Florida Keys Swordfish Limerick Contest John Merwin 2008

  • With a polished iamb, trochee, dactyl, amphibrach and anapest.

    Archive 2009-06-01 Eric Dickens 2009

  • The chapter then proceeds to consider the four most common metrical patterns: in relative order of importance, the iambic, the anapest, the trochee and the dactyl.

    THE PROSODY HANDBOOK: A GUIDE TO POETIC FORM by ROBERT BEUM & KARL SHAPIRO EILEEN 2009

  • If she was going to be honest, she had loved the way Seth knew what an anapest was, and a canzone.

    The Tenth Circle Picoult, Jodi, 1966- 2006

  • If she was going to be honest, she had loved the way Seth knew what an anapest was, and a canzone.

    The Tenth Circle Jodi Picoult 2006

  • For the next seven years, despite repeated strokes, my grandfather worked at a small desk, piecing together the legendary fragments into a larger mosaic, adding a stanza here, a coda there, soldering an anapest or an iamb.

    Middlesex Eugenides, Jeffery 2002

  • Isocrates about thirty verses, most of them senarian, and some of them anapest, which in prose have a more disagreeable effect than any others.

    Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. Marcus Tullius Cicero

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • US Railway Association, Standard Cipher Code, 1906: Railway telegraphers' shorthand meaning "Has not been allowed (to)".

    January 19, 2013

  • listed in xkcd's 1383th comic.

    I had to look this one up.

    June 18, 2014