Tribrach (poetry)

A tribrach is a metrical foot used in formal poetry and Greek and Latin verse. In quantitative meter (such as the meter of classical verse), it consists of three short syllables; in accentual-syllabic verse (such as formal English verse), the tribrach consists of a run of three short syllables substituted for a trochee. A "tribrach word" is a word consisting of three short syllables, such as Latin nitida "shining" or Greek ἔχετε "you have". An English equivalent would be a word with three short syllables such as Canada or passenger. The origin of the word tribrach is the Greek τρίβραχυς, derived from the prefix τρι- "three" and the adjective βραχύς "short". The name tribrachys is first recorded in the Roman writer Quintilian (1st century AD). According to Quintilian, an alternative name for a tribrach, was a "trochee": Tres breves trochaeum, quem tribrachyn dici volunt qui choreo trochaei nomen imponunt ("Three short syllables make a trochaeus, but those who give the name trochaeus to the choraeus prefer to call it a tribrachys.") Quintilian himself referred to it as a trochaeus. However, in modern usage a run of three short syllables is always called a tribrach, while the word trochee is used of a long + short (or heavy + light, or stressed + unstressed) sequence. Another name, mentioned in Diomedes Grammaticus (4th century AD) was tribrevis. The Latin writer on metrics Terentianus Maurus (2nd century AD) noted that the long syllable of a trochaic foot (– u) was often resolved into two short syllables, "hence what we call a tribrach can also be called a trochaeus". He adds that a tribrach can also be found as a substitute for an iambic foot (u –) and in the first or second half of an amphimacros (cretic) (– u –). The earliest mention of the word τρίβραχυς in a Greek writer recorded in Liddell and Scott's lexicon is in the grammarian Hephaestion (2nd century AD), who lists the tribrach among the possible forms which a trochaic foot could take. It was also known as τριβραχὺς ποῦς "a tribrach foot".