Definition of hexameter in English:
hexameter
noun hɛkˈsamɪtəhɛkˈsæmədər
Prosody A line of verse consisting of six metrical feet.
Example sentencesExamples
- Metrically, the ‘Hymn’ justifies Coleridge's claims for the English hexameter.
- For Schlegel, the feet of the hexameter must be of equal length, containing either one long and two short syllables or two long ones.
- My poetic skills were not up to constructing dactyllic hexameters, and I had already settled on the haiku form.
- Most celebrated were the Epodes, songs in simple strophes usually made up of a hexameter or iambic trimeter plus one or two shorter cola.
- Longfellow wrote in hexameters, in the tradition of the classical masters of he epic, Homer and Vergil.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Latin, from Greek hexametros 'of six measures' (from hex 'six' + metron 'measure').
Rhymes
diameter, heptameter, parameter, pentameter, tetrameter
Definition of hexameter in US English:
hexameter
nounhɛkˈsæmədərhekˈsamədər
Prosody A line of verse consisting of six metrical feet, especially of six dactyls.
Example sentencesExamples
- Longfellow wrote in hexameters, in the tradition of the classical masters of he epic, Homer and Vergil.
- My poetic skills were not up to constructing dactyllic hexameters, and I had already settled on the haiku form.
- Metrically, the ‘Hymn’ justifies Coleridge's claims for the English hexameter.
- For Schlegel, the feet of the hexameter must be of equal length, containing either one long and two short syllables or two long ones.
- Most celebrated were the Epodes, songs in simple strophes usually made up of a hexameter or iambic trimeter plus one or two shorter cola.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Latin, from Greek hexametros ‘of six measures’ (from hex ‘six’ + metron ‘measure’).