A bacchius () is a
metrical foot
The foot is the basic repeating metre (poetry), rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of poetry, verse in most Indo-European languages, Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of ...
used in
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
.
In
accentual-syllabic verse
Accentual-syllabic verse is an extension of accentual verse which fixes both the number of stresses and syllables within a line or stanza. Accentual-syllabic verse is highly regular and therefore easily scannable. Usually, either one metrical foot ...
we could describe a bacchius as a foot that goes like this:
Example:
When day breaks
the fish bite
at small flies.
The Christmas carol 'No Small Wonder' by Paul Edwards is a fair example of usage.
Metrical feet
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