Prosody. In 6 tribracchus, 8 tribrachus, 8–9 -ys; 7 tribrack. [ad. L. tribrachys, a. Gr. τρίβραχυς, f. TRI- + βραχύς short. Cf. F. tribraque (Littré).) A metrical foot consisting of three short syllables.
1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie, II. xiii. (Arb.), 133. For your foote tribracchus of all three short, ye haue very few trissillables.
1602. T. Campion, Art Eng. Poesie, iv. 11. We may vse a Spondee or Iambick and sometime a Tribrack or Dactile.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Tribrachus, or Tribrachys, (Gr.) a Foot in Greek and Latin Verse, consisting of three short Syllables; as Populus.
1827. Tate, Grk. Metres, in Theat. Grks. (ed. 2), 436. Of all the resolved feet, the Tribrach in Trochaic verse with its ictus on the first syllable … is most readily recognised by the ear as equivalent to the Trochee.
1885. Goodell, in Trans. Amer. Philol. Assoc., XVI. 88. The plain tribrach is frequent in every one’s reading.
Hence Tribrachic a., consisting of three short syllables; also, composed of tribrachs.
1843. Classical Museum, I. 359. The English speaker must rather have a decided tendency the other way—as in generosity—generositas—and this obviously enough, from the tendency to a tribrachic syllabic cadence already mentioned as so characteristic of our tongue.
1866. Blackie, Homer & Iliad, I. 401. If the range of pure tribrachic measure, or of tribrachs intermingled with trochees, appears much wider in our song-books than in volumes of poetry written to be read.
