The Collaborative International Dictionary
Anacreontic \A*nac`re*on"tic\, n. A poem after the manner of Anacreon; a sprightly little poem in praise of love and wine.
Anacreontic \A*nac`re*on"tic\, a. [L. Anacreonticus.]
Pertaining to, after the manner of, or in the meter of, the
Greek poet Anacreon; amatory and convivial.
--De Quincey.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
of or in the manner of Anacreon, "convivial bard of Greece" (literally "Up-lord"), the celebrated Greek lyrical poet (560-478 B.C.E.), born at Teos in Ionia. Also in reference to his lyric form (1706) of a four-line stanza, rhymed alternately, each line with four beats (three trochees and a long syllable), also "convivial and amatory" (1801); and "an erotic poem celebrating love and wine" (1650s).\n
\nFrancis Scott Key in 1814 set or wrote his poem "The Star-Spangled Banner" to the melody of "To Anacreon in Heav'n," the drinking song of the popular London gentleman's club called The Anacreontic Society, whose membership was dedicated to "wit, harmony, and the god of wine." The tune is late 18c. and may be the work of society member and court musician John Stafford Smith (1750-1836).
Wiktionary
a. (alternative form of anacreontic English) n. (alternative form of anacreontic English)
Usage examples of "anacreontic".
I was delighted that my scheme of wounding her vanity had succeeded, and I began by reading aloud an anacreontic, adding to its beauties by the modulation of my voice, and keenly enjoying her pleasure at finding her work so fair.
As I have never seen it in print, or heard it related by any one since, you shall have it instanter: It is well known that our present laughter-loving monarch was, in earlier years, often surrounded, when in private, by a coruscation of wit and talent, which included not only the most distinguished persons in the state, but also some celebrated bon vivants and amateur vocalists, among whom the names of the Duke of Orleans, Earl of Derby, Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the facetious poet laureat to the celebrated Beefsteak club, Tom Hewardine, Sir John Moore, Mr Brownlow, Captain Thompson, Bate Dudley, Captain Morris, and Colonel George Hanger, formed the most conspicuous characters at the princely anacreontic board.
At times the members of certain social clubs gave in these rooms subscription balls of anacreontic tendencies, the feminine element of which was recruited among the popular gay favorites of the period.
Some days passed before I could rid my thoughts of Thecla of certain impressions belonging to the false Thecla who had initiated me into the anacreontic diversions and fruitions of men and women.
He wrote sacred and panegyrical odes, Anacreontic and Horatian lyrics, dithyrambs and cantatas, and even, in his later years, ballads.
Some of his Lyceum verses are exercises in the forms practiced by Zhukovsky and Derzhavin, but by far the greater part belong to the favorite Arzamasian kinds of fugitive poetry, friendly epistles, and Anacreontic lyrics.
Leipzig effusions it was love, and love in a sufficiently Anacreontic sense.
Besides these, there are the Anacreontic odes, known to all Greek scholars and to a great number of English, since they have been frequently translated.
Among the interlaced melodies of the human counterpoint are love songs and anacreontics, marches and savage dance-rhythms, hymns of hate and loud hilarious chanties.
Great ingenuity, however, and vigor of thought, sometimes break out amidst those unnatural conceptions: a few anacreontics surprise us by their ease and gayety: his prose writings please by the honesty and goodness which they express, and even by their spleen and melancholy.
And while thus amazed and lost, once again, but in brisk and Bacchic measures, rose the magic strain: ANACREONTIC In the veins of the calix foams and glows The blood of the mantling vine, But oh!
He tells us in the Biographia Literaria that he had translated the eight hymns of Synesius from the Greek into English anacreontics "before his fifteenth year.