Pros. [ad. L. anapæstus, a. Gr. ἀνάπαιστος ‘struck back, reversed,’ f. ἀνά back + παί-ειν to strike.]
1. A reversed dactyl, a metrical foot, consisting of two short syllables followed by a long one.
[1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie (Arb.), 133. For your anapestus of two short and a long ye haue these words but not many moe, as mănĭfōld, mōnĭlēsse, rĕmănēnt, hŏlĭnēsse.]
1678. Phillips, Anapæst.
1789. Belsham, Ess., I. xii. 222. French heroic verse, which consists of four regular anapests.
a. 1849. H. Coleridge, Ess., II. 116. [The L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, etc.] owe their delightful variety to the judicious intermixture of trochees, spondees, and even anapæsts.
2. A verse composed of, or containing, such feet.
1846. Grote, Greece, II. II. vii. 572. The scanty fragments remaining to us of his elegies and anapæsts.
1861. Gen. P. Thompson, Audi Alt., III. cxliv. 129. What did the poet laureate know about it? He should have kept to his anapæsts.
