alexandrine

See also: Alexandrine

English

So called from its use in old French poems on Alexander the Great (Roman d'Alexandre, c. 1177).[1]

alexandrine (plural alexandrines)

(poetry) A line of poetic meter having twelve syllables, usually divided into two or three equal parts.
- 2005, Rachel Killick, “Baudelaire's versification: conservative or radical?”, in Rosemary Lloyd, editor, The Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 52:
  The dominant metre in Les Fleurs du Mal is the twelve-syllable alexandrine, the defining metre of French versification, with the eight-syllable line a distant runner-up and the ten-syllable line barely visible.
An Alexandrine parrot or parakeet, Psittacula eupatria.

line of a twelve-syllable poetic meter

alexandrine