cretic

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Related to cretics: Critics

cre·tic

(krē′tĭk)

[Latin Crēticus, of Crete, Cretic foot, from Crēta, Crete.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

cretic

(ˈkriːtɪk)

(Poetry) prosody a metrical foot consisting of three syllables, the first long, the second short, and the third long (¯˘¯). Also called: amphimacer Compare amphibrach

[C16: from Latin crēticus consisting of the amphimacer, literally: Cretan, from Greek krētikos, from Krētē Crete]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

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And I think that I have an indistinct recollection of his mentioning a complex Cretic rhythm; also a dactylic or heroic, and he arranged them in some manner which I do not quite understand, making the rhythms equal in the rise and fall of the foot, long and short alternating; and, unless I am mistaken, he spoke of an iambic as well as of a trochaic rhythm, and assigned to them short and long quantities.

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