Home › Glossary › Letter F

Four-foot Bacchic

Meter
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A tetrameter line composed of four Bacchic feet (short-long-long) in progression

Detailed Definition
Four-foot Bacchic is a metrical line consisting of four Bacchic feet (each: two stressed syllables + one unstressed), producing a heavy, driving rhythm that is uncommon in English but effective for incantatory or dramatic intensity; the accumulation of four such units creates a pounding, ritualistic cadence often associated with ecstasy, war, or divine invocation.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ben Jonson’s “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes” uses a four-foot Bacchic (stressed-unstressed-unstressed) in modified form; In Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain,” Bacchic rhythms mimic ship’s motion: “In a solitude of the sea”; Contemporary poet A.E. Stallings adapts Bacchic meter in “Sestina: Like” for comic emphasis; Ezra Pound’s “Canto I” echoes Homeric Bacchic rhythms in English hexameter approximations; W.B. Yeats occasionally employs Bacchic feet for incantatory effect in “The Second Coming”; In Robert Graves’ “To Juan at the Winter Solstice,” Bacchic undertones support mythic tone.
Additional Notes
A Four-foot Bacchic line is a rare and heavy metrical line composed of four Bacchic feet, where a Bacchic foot is typically ⌣–– (unstressed-stressed-stressed); this classical meter is known for its slow, dignified pace.
Also Known As
Bacchic of four feet quadrate Bacchiac Bacchic rhythm line Bacchiac tetrameter Bacchic tetrameter line
Skip to main content