Crossword clues for spondee
spondee
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Spondee \Spon"dee\ (sp[o^]n"d[=e]), n. [L. spondeus, Gr. ? (sc. ?), fr. ? a drink offering, libation, fr. ? to pour out, make a libation: cf. F. spond['e]e. So called because at libations slow, solemn melodies were used, chiefly in this meter.] (Pros.) A poetic foot of two long syllables, as in the Latin word l[=e]g[=e]s.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"metrical foot consisting of two long syllables," late 14c., from Old French spondee (14c.), from Latin spondeus, from Greek spondeios (pous), the name of the meter originally used in chants accompanying libations, from sponde "solemn libation, a drink-offering," related to spendein "make a drink offering," from PIE root *spend- "to make an offering, perform a rite," hence "to engage oneself by a ritual act" (cognates: Latin spondere "to engage oneself, promise," Hittite shipantahhi "I pour out a libation, I sacrifice"). Related: Spondaic.
Wiktionary
n. A word or metrical foot of two syllables, either both long or both stressed.
WordNet
n. a metrical unit with stressed-stressed syllables
Wikipedia
In poetry, a spondee ( Latin: spondeus) is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables, as determined by stress in modern meters. The word comes from the Greek σπονδή, spondē, " libation".
The spondee typically does not provide the basis for a metrical line. Instead, spondees are found as irregular feet in meter based on another type of foot.
For example, the epics of Homer and Vergil are written in dactylic hexameter. This term suggests a line of six dactyls, but a spondee can be substituted in most positions. The first line of Vergil's Aeneid has the pattern dactyl-dactyl-spondee-spondee-dactyl-spondee:
Ārmă vĭrūmquĕ cănō, Troīaē quī prīmŭs ăb ōrīsIn classical meter spondees are easily identified because the distinction between long and short syllables is unambiguous. In English meter indisputable examples are harder to find because metrical feet are identified by stress, and stress is a matter of interpretation.
For example, the first part of this line from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (in iambic pentameter) would normally be interpreted as two spondees:
Crý, crý! Tróy búrns, or élse let Hélen gó.In grammar, a spondee is a two-syllable word in which there is equal emphasis placed on both syllables.
Category:Grammar
"Spondee" is a piece composed by intelligent dance music (IDM) duo Matmos. It is the third track on their 2001 album A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure. The piece revolves around audio samples from a hearing test: a woman's voice recites two-syllable words, stressing both syllables. Audiologist Rebecca Highlander, CCC-A, reads a list of phonetically balanced words ( spondees, with equal stress on the first and second syllable). Recorded in the hearing test booth at the Jean Weingarden Peninsula Oral School for the Deaf, beeps and tones were generated during the response curve testing of hearing aids.
Spondee may refer to:
- Spondee, a metrical foot used in poetry
- Spondee (grammar), a two-syllable word in which there is equal emphasis placed on both syllables
- "Spondee" (song), an electronica song composed by Matmos
- Spondee, in Greek language a drink offering ( libation) of wine poured out to the gods before drinking
Usage examples of "spondee".
It made no use of the traditional stress-patterned metrics he knew so well, the iambs and trochees and dactyls, the spondees and anapests, out of which Furvain had always built his poems with such swiftness and ease.
Pett about the difference between picric acid and trinitrotoluene, than which a pleasanter topic for the luncheon table could hardly be selected, and the voice of Clarence Renshaw rose above all other competing noises, as he spoke of the functions of the trochaic spondee.
This procedure, resembling as it does the trope of zeugma, gives the effect of reducing diverse things to unity, eliminating particulars for generalities, just as the final two feet of the hexameter, the dactyl and the final firm spondee, cut across the grammatical and word divisions to punctuate the shifting cadences of the first four feet.
Gippius spat out a line of Pushkin to demonstrate the false spondee in iambic verse, his outworn prosodic terms failed to arouse the nascent poet in his class.
Latin, nodded his head, in cadence, at every roll which La Fontaine impressed upon his body, according to the undulations of the dactyls and spondees.