of or relating to a type of classical verse line consisting of a spondee, two or three choriambs, and an iamb
noun
2. Also called: Asclepiad
an Asclepiadean verse
Word origin
C17: via Latin from Greek Asklēpiadēs (about 270 bc), who invented the verse form
Asclepiadean in American English
(əˌsklipiəˈdiən)
Classical Prosody
adjective
1.
noting or pertaining to a verse consisting of a spondee, two or three choriambi, and an iamb
noun
2.
an Asclepiadean verse
Word origin
[1700–10; ‹ Gk Asklēpiádei(os) pertaining to Asclepiades, 3rd-century Greek poet to whom the verse was attributed + -an]This word is first recorded in the period 1700–10. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: cozy, emphatic, hump, marquise, sliding scale-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)