epode
(ˈɛpəʊd)
Also 7 epod.
[a. OF. epode ad. L. epōdos, a. Gr. ἐπῳδύς after-song, incantation, f. ἐπ{aisubacu}δειν, f. ἐπί upon, after + {alenisisubacu}δειν, ἀείδειν to sing.]
1. a. A kind of lyric poem, invented by Archilochus, in which a long line is followed by a shorter one, of metres different from the elegiac; used by Horace in his 5th Book of Odes. b. An incantation. c. A poem of grave character.
| 1598 Florio, Epodo, a kinde of verses, hauing the first verse longer then the second. 1616 B. Jonson Forest x, Now my thought takes wing, And now an Epode to deep ears I sing. 1647 Crashaw Music's Duel Poems, 90 She qualifies their zeal With the cool epode of a graver note. 1655–60 Stanley Hist. Philos. 410/1 Pythagoras made use of Epodes. 1656–81 Blount Glossogr., Epod. 1693 Dryden Juvenal Ded. (R.) Horace seems to have purged himself from those splenetic reflections in those odes and epodes. 1721–1800 in Bailey. 1847 in Craig. And in mod. Dicts. |
2. The part of a lyric ode sung after the strophe and antistrophe.
| 1671 Milton Samson Pref., Strophe, Antistrophe, or Epode..were a kind of Stanzas framed only for the music then used with the Chorus that sung. 1847 Grote Greece ii. xxix. (1862) III. 67 Choric compositions, containing not only a strophê and antistrophê, but also a third division or epode succeeding them. |
Hence eˈpodic a., pertaining to, or of the nature of, an epode.
| 1866 Felton Anc. & Mod. Gr. I. ix. 152 A series of iambic and epodic invectives. |