amphibrachic
amphibrachic adjective: consisting of amphibrachs, metrical feet consisting of either a long syllable between two that are short, or an accented syllable between two that are not accented.
Adjective
amphibrachic (not comparable)
- Consisting of amphibrachs, metrical feet consisting of either a long syllable between two that are short, or an accented syllable between two that are not accented.
- Father Humphrey says, "Anapaestic and amphibrachic verse, being similar in measure and movement, are pleasing to the ear, and well adapted to cheerful and humourous^([sic]) compositions; and sometimes to elegiac compositions, and subjects important and solemn."1851, Goold Brown, The Grammar of English Grammars, 6th edition
- […]she will grow up to have long hair, a knack for the violin, an anonymous male admirer who writes her love poetry in amphibrachic tetrameter, and a son who dies in battle[…].1988 December 23, Albert Williams, “Melissa, While She Sleeps”, in Chicago Reader
Origin of amphibrachic
Learned borrowing from Latin amphibrachicus. By surface analysis, amphibrach + -ic.
Words formed from amphibrachic
Questions about amphibrachic
- What does amphibrachic mean?
- Amphibrachic means consisting of amphibrachs, metrical feet consisting of either a long syllable between two that are short, or an accented syllable between two that are not accented.
- What part of speech is amphibrachic?
- Amphibrachic is an adjective.
Words near amphibrachic in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: amphibrachic (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “amphibrachic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/amphibrachic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.