Word.ws English Dictionary

hypercatalexis

hypercatalexis noun: the addition of one or two syllables to the last foot of a verse.

Noun

hypercatalexis (uncountable)

  1. The addition of one or two syllables to the last foot of a verse

Origin of hypercatalexis

Coined in the late 1880s as a back-formation from hypercatalectic, from Latin hypercatalēcticus, from Ancient Greek ὑπερκαταληκτικός (huperkatalēktikós), from ὑπερ- (huper-, “over”) + καταληκτικός (katalēktikós, “incomplete”)

Questions about hypercatalexis

What does hypercatalexis mean?
Hypercatalexis means the addition of one or two syllables to the last foot of a verse.
What part of speech is hypercatalexis?
Hypercatalexis is a noun.

Words near hypercatalexis in the dictionary

  1. hypercars
  2. hypercasual
  3. hypercatabolic
  4. hypercatabolism
  5. hypercatalectic
  6. hypercatalexis
  7. hypercatalytic
  8. hypercatecholaminemia
  9. hypercatecholemia
  10. hypercatharsis
  11. hypercathartic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hypercatalexis (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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