alexandrine

noun

1. A line of poetic meter having twelve syllables, usually divided into two or three equal parts.

   “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.”

2. A native or inhabitant of Alexandria.

   “The Alexandrines considered themselves Greeks and Macedonians. And, as a matter of fact, it does not seem likely that there was any considerable infusion of native Egyptian blood in the Alexandrines.”

   “The Alexandrines, proud of their sophistication, claimed that the Cairenes were provincial, the Cairo girls somewhat dowdy; their petticoats showed below their dresses, and they boasted that the really beautiful Cairo girls all married in Alexandria. To prove their point, Alexandrines invariably mentioned the celebrated Quatour Fleuri, four beautiful young brides, all Cairo born, who had all married Alexandrian men—and were supposed to have acquired that extra chic in Alexandria.”

   “Nestorius retired to his monastery; from there he was banished first to Petra in modern Jordan, and then to the deserts of Upper Egypt where he was persecuted by Egyptian monks and taken prisoner by hostile nomads. The affair was as much political as theological—the Romans and Alexandrines were jealous of his influence as patriarch of Constantinople—but it led to permanent schisms.”

   “Before that point perhaps only a third of the empire’s inhabitants were Roman citizens.⁴ The remainder were either foreigners (peregrini) or had one or other of a range of statuses that can be thought of as part citizenships, among them Latins, Junian Latins, Alexandrines and the former slaves of Roman citizens.”

3. (abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis)Ellipsis of Alexandrine parakeet.

   “He is hardly distinguishable from an ordinary cock Alexandrine except for his slightly smaller size and rather less massive head and beak—the latter a distinct improvement.”

   “My own experiences of a liberty Alexandrine were of a very different nature. One Christmas Eve, above the pre-dusk cacophony which will be heard in any collection of parrots, I detected an unfamiliar voice. I soon sighted an Alexandrine flying towards the neighbouring garden.”

   “The nominate Alexandrine has green plumage and an immense beak. As with many of the ringnecked variety, color mutations are becoming more available, including lutino (yellow) and blue. The Alexandrine has five distinct subspecies, some slightly larger or smaller than the nominate bird.”

4. (alt-of)Alternative letter-case form of alexandrine.

   “Some of these Alexandrines are well marked, in others the last word has such a strong accent on the last syllable but two that both final syllables fall on the ear rather as an addition to the last measure, a mere superfluous syllable, than a distinct measure by themselves.”

   “In all these matters each man did as he liked—some used prose, some blank, some frequent short lines, some none at all: some weak-endings, some trisyllabic feet, some female endings, some Alexandrines; but none of these things were patent to the public.”

   “In some cases these are composed of trimeter couplets; that is, with the pause after the third foot; in others, they are true Alexandrines, with pauses after the second, seventh, eighth, or tenth syllable.”

   “A greater challenge to the domination of the Alexandrine was by Verlaine, who wrote lines that looked like Alexandrines according to a completely different (and arbitrary) set of rules: thirteen-syllable lines, eleven-syllable lines, twelve-syllable lines without caesura.”

adj

1. Of or relating to Alexandria.

   “Dioscorus sent a man there called Eutyches, a monk—monks had been too useful to Alexandrine politics to be abandoned.”

   “In Peking he teamed up with a junior partner in the wool concern, a melancholy multi-lingual Alexandrine Greek who joined him from a trip to India on other business for the firm, for a fortnight’s concentrated talks with various corporation chiefs.”

2. Of or relating to Alexander the Great.

   “The more enterprising elements tended to emigrate to overseas centres of Hellenism, and colonies, especially after the Alexandrine conquests, while in Greece itself there were destructive wars and class conflicts.”

   “In a few months, he [Antigonus I Monophthalmus] had leapt from being one satrap among many to a contender for Alexandrine supremacy, and doubtless that, or something like it, was exactly what was on his mind.”

name

1. A female given name from French.

   “Whoever will drink of an unadulterated stream must go to the fountain-head. This, Miss Laura Alexandrine Smith has done, and that she has drunk deeply, is easy to be seen from the spirit and enthusiasm with which she writes.”

   “Alexandrine Ave., named for Alexandrine M. Willis, the wife of B. Campau, land owner (1863)”

   “He teamed up with Amin and Iksander, named, Iksander said, for Alexander the Great. / Cool, John said. I read somewhere that the year he died, children all over the world were named for him. Alexander, Alexandrine, Alexandra.”