arsis means raising of the voice in prosody, accented part of a metrical foot. It carries an Arena rating of 1561, earned across 12 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, arsis ranks #1,548 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #2,817 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words, #5,040 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #5,078 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words.
arsis is pronounced /ˈɑː(ɹ)sɪs/.
Why “arsis” is a great word
The accented or metrically strong part of a poetic foot or musical measure. From Latin arsis, from Ancient Greek ἄρσις (ársis, 'lifting, elevation'). Unlike thesis, its complementary, unaccented descent, or ictus, the pinpoint of stress itself, arsis is the entire ascending, emphasized portion of the rhythm. It is the conductor's upward-sweeping baton, the defiant rise of a heart before a fall, and the subtle lift of a syllable that transforms sound into cadence—a small, muscular assertion of order against the surrounding silence.
Etymology
From Latin Arsis, from Ancient Greek ἄρσις (ársis, “elevation”).
noun
- Raising of the voice in prosody, accented part of a metrical foot
- The stronger part of a musical measure: the part containing the beat.
- The stronger part of a metrical foot: the part containing the long (heavy) syllable in quantitative meter, or the stressed syllable in a qualitative meter.e.g.“it comes to pass that the arsis may effect some change in the order of which it is itself the commencement” — 1830, Johann Gottfried Jacob Hermann, Hermann's Elements of the Doctrine of Metres:
- The elevation of the hand, or that part of the bar at which it is raised, in beating time; the weak or unaccented part of the bar, opposed to the thesis.
- The elevation of the voice to a higher pitch in speaking.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- arsic 76% match — Of the elevation of the voice in pronouncing the syllables of a word, usually the part of the word or phrase upon which the stress or accent falls. vs arsis →
- arist 56% match — A rising, as from a seat, a bed, or the ground, or from below the horizon. vs arsis →
- barytonesis 56% match — The shift of accent from the last syllable of a stem or word to a preceding syllable. vs arsis →
- anacrusis 56% match — An unstressed syllable at the start of a verse. vs arsis →
- upstep 54% match — An upward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language. vs arsis →
- aphesis 54% match — The loss of the initial unstressed vowel of a word. vs arsis →
- accent 54% match — A higher-pitched or stronger (louder or longer) articulation of a particular syllable of a word or phrase in order to distinguish it from the others or to emphasize it. vs arsis →
- anacrusic 53% match — Of or pertaining to anacrusis vs arsis →