arsis
/ˈɑː(ɹ)sɪs/noun
arsis is a noun meaning “The stronger part of a musical measure: the part containing the beat” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-R-S-I-S, and it appears about once in every 46 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of arsis is arses.
What does arsis mean?
noun
- 1
The stronger part of a musical measure: the part containing the beat.
- 2
The stronger part of a metrical foot: the part containing the long (heavy) syllable in quantitative meter, or the stressed syllable in a qualitative meter.
- 3
The elevation of the hand, or that part of the bar at which it is raised, in beating time; the weak or unaccented part of the bar, opposed to the thesis.
- 4
The elevation of the voice to a higher pitch in speaking.
noun
- 1
Raising of the voice in prosody, accented part of a metrical foot
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce arsis?
- /ˈɑː(ɹ)sɪs/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of arsis
- arses plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is arsis?
Arsis appears about once in every 46 million words in written English, the 209,386th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Arsis in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense the stronger part of a measure or foot:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does arsis come from?
From Ancient Greek ἄρσις (ársis, “lifting”), from αἴρω (aírō, “to lift”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).