Acatalectic

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˌeɪˌkæt.əˈlɛk.tɪk/

Definitions

1. Describes a metrical line of poetry in which the final foot is complete with no missing syllables
2. Refers to verse that ends with a full, unstressed syllable rather than an incomplete one
3. Characterizes poetic lines that contain the expected number of syllables, without omission at the end

Etymology: Prosody is where this word earns its keep. In Greek metrics, a line of verse was "katalektikos" ("left off" or "stopped short") when its final foot was incomplete, and "akatalēktos," the negated form, described the opposite: a line that ended exactly on the full number of feet, with nothing cut away. The prefix "a-" simply means "not," so the whole word amounts to "not left off," a precise technical label for a line that finishes complete. The term passed into Late Latin as "acatalēcticus" and from there into English, where it remains a specialist word used by scholars of versification. Its opposite is "catalectic," which describes a line missing a syllable at the end, so the pair marks the difference between a line that runs to its full length and one that stops a beat early.