alexandrine means A line of poetic meter having twelve syllables, usually divided into two or three equal parts. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 85 out of 100.
alexandrine is pronounced /ˌælɪkˈsændriːn/.
Why “alexandrine” is a great word
ALEXANDRINE — [Noun] A line of verse of twelve syllables, with a mandatory caesura after the sixth, that serves as the stately backbone of French classical poetry. From Middle French alexandrin, so named from its use in Old French poems about Alexander the Great, particularly the Roman d'Alexandre (c. 1177). Unlike "pentameter" (which measures five feet and governs the English sonnet's pulse) or "hexameter" (which strides in six feet across ancient epics), the alexandrine is defined by syllabic count and an architectural, central pause. It is the measured cadence of a formal garden path, the balanced heft of twin urns on a marble mantel, and the solemn, echoing space between a cathedral's paired pillars—a vessel of order imposing its calm, symmetrical geometry upon the unruly heat of thought.
noun
- A line of poetic meter having twelve syllables, usually divided into two or three equal parts.“The dominant metre in Les Fleurs du Mal is the twelve-syllable alexandrine, the defining metre of French versification, with the eight-syllable line a distant runner-up and the ten-syllable line barely visible.”
- A native or inhabitant of Alexandria.“The Alexandrines considered themselves Greeks and Macedonians. And, as a matter of fact, it does not seem likely that there was any considerable infusion of native Egyptian blood in the Alexandrines.”
adj
- Of or relating to Alexandria.“The division of Scholz himself, in the work last named, is into the Alexandrine and Constantinopolitan recension. […] But in amalgamating the Alexandrine and Western Mss. together, he has done not a little violence to both. Moreover, taking the fact as true, which Eusebius has related in respect to his making out fifty copies of the New Testament for the churches at Constantinople, in the time of ”
- Of or relating to Alexander the Great.“When we picture to ourselves his [Napoleon’s] dawning military genius at Toulon—his daring and decided politics in the storms of the Revolution—his Cæsarian ambition in assuming the purple—his rivalry of Hannibal in urging an army, with heavy artillery, over the frozen and apparently impassable summits of the very Alps crossed by the Carthaginian General—[…]—his Alexandrine bravery on many a blood”
name
- A female given name from French.“Whoever will drink of an unadulterated stream must go to the fountain-head. This, Miss Laura Alexandrine Smith has done, and that she has drunk deeply, is easy to be seen from the spirit and enthusiasm with which she writes.”