Meanings
plural sexameters
- rareSynonym of hexameter.
I put my whole soul into the work and almost lived on quartameters, pentameters, sexameters, etc.
1918 December 28, ““Bookey’s” Divinity”, in The Chicago Daily Tribune, volume LXXVII, number 311, page 95 more examples
The poem which is written in sexameters, is an invocation to the Redeemer and the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in it the pope solemnly bids farewell to all Christians.
1903 July 7, The Scranton Republican, page 1Our temptation was to treat the subject in an appropriate lyric manner, but Mr. Orpheus Nutt claimed first chance, and is now working on an ode of welcome, in dactylic sexameters.
1918 December 13, “Mr. Thaw Is Back”, in The Spokesman-Review, 36th year, number 213, Spokane, Wash., page 4Hernandez's structure - iambic sexameter in the first, second, fourth, sixth lines, and iambic tetrameter in the third and fifth lines - may be successful for descriptive purposes, but it is hardly successful in dramatic passages.
1973, A Translation of Amado V. Hernandez's Bayang Malaya, Manila: Textbook Development Committee, De la Salle College, page 3Composed by Wakeham for the tenth number of the “Winter Chronicle,” on Monday 3 January 1820, these seven octets of cross-rhymed anapestic sexameters cannot fail to bring to mind such traditional tunes as “Sweet Betsy from Clyde,” (and, perhaps for the modern reader, such traditional themes as the “Northwest Passage,” as composed and sung by the late Stan Rogers).
1992 spring/summer, “The Poetry of The “New Georgia Gazette” or “Winter Chronicle” 1819-1820”, in Canadian Poetry, number 30, page 52Neither of us had ever tasted four-star French cuisine, which he explained was just as much a part of French culture as any statue in the Louvre and any old play in five acts and rhymed iambic sexameter.
1998, Shirley Abbott, Love’s Apprentice, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, page 117Synonyms: hexameter
Synonyms & antonyms
nounSynonym of hexameter.
Origin
From sexa- + meter. Piecewise doublet of hexameter.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
sexameter. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sexameter
“sexameter.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sexameter. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “sexameter,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sexameter.
Source: sexameter on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.