hexameter

1. A line of verse consisting of six metrical feet.
2. In classical prosody, a line in which the first four feet are either dactylic or spondaic, the fifth dactylic, and the sixth spondaic.

[Latin, from Greek hexametros, having six metrical feet : hexa-, hexa- + metron, meter; see meter¹.]

hexameter [hek‐samm‐it‐er], a metrical verse line of six feet (see foot). Its most important form is the dactylic hexameter used in Greek and Latin epic poetry and in the elegiac distich: this quantitative metre permitted the substitution of any of the first four dactyls (and more rarely of the fifth) by a spondee, and was catalectic in that the final foot was either a spondee or a trochee. Although successfully adapted to the stress‐based metres of German, Russian, and Swedish verse (by, among others, Goethe and Pushkin), the dactylic hexameter has not found an established place in English or French verse, except in some rather awkward experiments such as A. H. Clough's The Bothie of Tober‐na‐Vuolich (1848), from which this hexameter comes:

This was the final retort from the eager, impetuous Philip.

A line of verse consisting of six metrical feet; the term, however, is usually used for dactylic hexameter, consisting of dactyls and spondees, the meter in which the Greek and Latin epics were written.

Hexameter is a literary and poetic form, a line consisting of six metrical feet, as in the Iliad. It was the standard epic metre in Greek and became standard for Latin too. It was also used in other types of composition -- in Horace's satires, for instance, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. In Greek mythology, hexameter was invented by Phemonoe.

The hexameter has never enjoyed a similar popularity in English, where the standard metre is iambic pentameter;^{[citation needed]} however, various English poems have been written in hexameter over the centuries. There are numerous examples of iambic hexameter from the 16th century and a few from the 17th; the most prominent of these is Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion (1612) in hexameter couplets. An example from Drayton:

Nor any other wold like Cotswold ever sped,

So rich and fair a vale in fortuning to wed.

In the 17th century the iambic hexameter, or alexandrine, was used as a substitution in the heroic couplet, and as one of the types of permissible lines in lyrical stanzas and the Pindaric odes of Cowley and Dryden.

In the late 18th century the hexameter was adapted to the Lithuanian language by Kristijonas Donelaitis. His poem "Metai" (The Seasons) is considered the most successful hexameter text in Lithuanian as yet.

Several attempts were made in the 19th century to naturalise the dactylic hexameter to English, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Arthur Hugh Clough and others, none of them particularly successful. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote many of his poems in six foot iambic and sprung rhythm lines. In the 20th century a loose ballad-like six-foot line with a strong medial pause was used by William Butler Yeats. The iambic six-foot line has also been used occasionally, and an accentual six-foot line has been used by translators from the Latin and many poets.

See also: Dactylic hexameter

External links

• Example in English by Coleridge
• Hexametrica, a tutorial on Latin dactylic hexameter at Skidmore College.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - heksameter

Nederlands (Dutch)
hexameter, zesvoetige dichtregel

Français (French)
n. - hexamètre

Deutsch (German)
n. - Hexameter (Vers aus sechs metrischen Füßen)

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (προσωδ.) εξάμετρο

Italiano (Italian)
esametro

Português (Portuguese)
n. - hexâmetro (m)

Русский (Russian)
гекзаметр

Español (Spanish)
n. - hexámetro

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - hexameter

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
六步格, 六步格的诗

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 六步格, 六步格的詩

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 6보격

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 六歩格
adj. - 六歩格の

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) السداسي التفاعيل‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮שורה בעלת שישה קצבים, הקסמטר‬

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