denoting or relating to the 7th century bc Greek poet Archilochus or his verse, esp the iambic trimeters or trochaic tetrameters used by him
Archilochian in American English
(ˌɑːrkəˈloukiən)
adjective
Prosody
of or pertaining to a form of poetic meter devised by the Greek Archilochus in which various types of meter are combined in the sameline or couplet, as a dactylic tetrameter plus a trochaic tripody
Word origin
[1745–55; ‹ Gk archilóchei(os) (equiv. to Archíloch(os) archilochus + -eios adj. suffix) + -an]This word is first recorded in the period 1745–55. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: coda, development, input, personification, umbilical cord-an is a suffix occurring originally in adjectives borrowed from Latin, formed from nounsdenoting places (Roman; urban) or persons (Augustan), and now productively forming English adjectives by extension of the Latin pattern.Attached to geographical names, it denotes provenance or membership (American; Chicagoan), the latter sense now extended to membership in social classes, religious denominations,etc., in adjectives formed from various kinds of noun bases (Episcopalian; pedestrian; Puritan; Republican) and membership in zoological taxa (acanthocephalan; crustacean). Attached to personal names, it has the additional senses “contemporary with” (Elizabethan; Jacobean) or “proponent of” (Hegelian; Freudian) the person specified by the noun base. It also occurs in a set of personal nouns,mainly loanwords from French, denoting one who engages in, practices, or works withthe referent of the base noun (comedian; grammarian; historian; theologian)