cae·su·ra

also ce·su·ra (sĭ-zho͝or′ə, -zo͝or′ə)

n. pl. cae·su·ras or cae·su·rae (-zho͝or′ē, -zo͝or′ē) also ce·su·ras or ce·su·rae

1. A pause in a line of verse dictated by sense or natural speech rhythm rather than by metrics.

2. A pause or interruption, as in conversation: After another weighty caesura the senator resumed speaking.

3. In Latin and Greek prosody, a break in a line caused by the ending of a word within a foot, especially when this coincides with a sense division.

4. Music A pause or breathing at a point of rhythmic division in a melody.

[Latin caesūra, a cutting, from caesus, past participle of caedere, to cut off; see kaə-id- in Indo-European roots.]

cae·su′ral, cae·su′ric adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Adj.

caesural - of or relating to a caesura

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References in periodicals archive

It is absolutely under the control of the operator." (22) This description reflects back on "Sibyl's Leaves," suggesting that the manuscript's varying caesural marks render the long sonnet navigable, much like tracks on a modern compact disc.

Phonographic Hopkins: Sound, Cylinders, Silence, and "Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves"

At the same time, he was engaged in the composition of 154 Forties, poems written in a more traditional compositional method, incorporating an emphasis on prosody and caesural spaces.

Freely revised and edited: anarchist authorship in Jackson Mac Low's The Stein Poems

Both these positions shaped a culture of 'continuous commemoration' and 'imperial thanksgiving' that preserved 1857 as 'a caesural moment in the history of the Indian empire--replete with signs and wonders [...]--when all was nearly lost only to be regained once more'.

Cawnpore, Kipling and Charivari: 1857 and the politics of commemoration

After a caesural intermission, the poem returns to the ants' world, ensconcing the speaker's emotions.

Three American poets of Asian descent

et femme d'Helenus," with all the poignancy of that caesural "helas!") (Oc 1: 85-87; "Le Cygne," poem LXXXIX).

Heightening the lowly (Baudelaire: "Je n'ai pas oublie ..." and "A une passante")

The following systems from Richard III and Romeo and Juliet illustrate this development (in particular, note how Romeo's soliloquy observes the caesural pauses): Duchess of York (R3 2.2.79-88): A: Alas!

Structural secrets: Shakespeare's complex Chiasmus

From the caesura in his surname (which creates its own puzzle and foils assumptions of a Scottish heritage) to the six-decade output of delightfully improbable, sometimes neologistic vocabularies, chance-determined (or not) caesural silences, and lettristic, phonemic, and other kinds of sonic and visual play that combined intentionality and indeterminacy, Mac Low's brilliance and humor both augmented and complicated linguistic geometries of attention.

Chance of a lifetime: Joan Retallack on Jackson Mac Low