Definitions

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

  • noun Plural form of hemistich.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

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

Examples

  • The only charm unchosen, "For Unfruitful Land", was long and repetitive, comprising lengthy instructions in prose and then the spoken invocations in verse, composed, like all Anglo-Saxon poetry, in hemistichs.

    Nick Laird enters the spirit of Anglo-Saxon poetry Nick Laird 2010

  • Hence tables, memorial couplets and hemistichs are required to ascertain the station, without which precaution journeys are apt to end badly.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Málik is in Rajaz Muzdawij, the hemistichs rhyming and the assonance being confined to the couplet.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • First of all ranks the Jáhili (Ignoramus) of The Ignorance, these pagans left hemistichs, couplets, pieces and elegies which once composed a large corpus and which is now mostly forgotten.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • This fact led to the syllabic naming of the notes as Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, as may be shown by capitalizing the initial syllables of the hemistichs:

    Archive 2008-06-01 bls 2008

  • It consists of three couplets or six-line strophes: all the hemistichs of the first are in monorhyme; in the second and following stanzas the three first hemistichs take a new rhyme, but the fourth resumes the assonance of the first set and is followed by the third couplet of No. 1, serving as bob or refrain, e.g., aaaaaa + bbbaaa + cccaaa and so forth.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Finally I print the couplets in Arab form separating the hemistichs by asterisks.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • The hymn is written in Sapphic stanzas, of which the first is famous in the history of music for the reason that the notes of the melody corresponding with the initial syllables of the six hemistichs are the first six notes of the diatonic scale of C.

    Archive 2008-06-01 bls 2008

  • He wanders from one subject to another, from the association, not of the ideas but of sounds, and the work is composed of hemistichs which, it is quite evident, have forced themselves upon the author by the mere force of the catchwords on which they turn.

    Early Reviews of English Poets John Louis Haney

  • It omits ix 47 and xiv 37, and interchanges the second hemistichs of iii 26 and 28; xvi 30 is inserted by a later hand, perhaps in an erasure.

    The Last Poems of Ovid 43 BC-18? Ovid

Comments

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