Cretic
Quick answer: A cretic, or amphimacer, is a three syllable metrical foot with stresses on both ends: DUM-da-DUM. Learn how this emphatic foot works in English verse.
A cretic is a metrical foot of three syllables with stresses at both ends and a light syllable in the middle: DUM-da-DUM, as in the phrases HERE and NOW, DAY by DAY, or the word overFLOW spoken with weight on both outer syllables. It is also called an amphimacer, Greek for long on both sides, and it is the exact reverse of the amphibrach.
The cretic takes its more common name from Crete, whose ancient songs reportedly favoured the rhythm. In English it never became a sustained meter, but it thrives in the wild: slogans, chants, proverbs and headlines love the shape because it opens and closes on a punch. Poets use cretics as emphatic gestures, especially at line ends, where the double stress frames the light syllable like brackets.
How It Works
The cretic is rhythm as emphasis. Both outer syllables strike, so a cretic phrase feels complete and quotable on its own, which is why advertising and oratory are full of them: phrases with the shape of SIGN the FORM or TAKE it BACK. Here is a pair of invented lines leaning on cretics: BREAK the LOCK, BURN the MAP. / NOTHing LEFT, NO way BACK. Each three syllable unit lands twice, and the middle syllable acts as a hinge.
In classical drama, runs of cretics conveyed excitement and urgency. English poets tend to use single cretics as substitutions, or to build short chanting lines from them, since longer cretic runs quickly exhaust the voice: all those stresses demand breath.
Where You Will See It
Greek comedy used cretic passages for rapid patter, and Roman playwrights borrowed the practice. In English, Tennyson and Hopkins produce cretic effects when they crowd stresses around a light syllable, and nursery rhymes and skipping chants throw up the pattern constantly. Its most visible modern habitat is not the poem but the slogan: political chants, sports crowds and headline writers all reach instinctively for the double-ended stress, a fact worth studying if you want your lines to be memorable.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Deploy cretics where you want a phrase to feel carved rather than spoken: openings, closings, refrains, imperatives. A cretic at the end of an iambic line adds a hammered final stress that readers register as authority. For chant poems and protest pieces, whole short lines of cretic shape work well, though more than a few lines of it grows relentless. As a revision exercise, find your poem's key three word phrase and test whether rearranging it into DUM-da-DUM sharpens it; surprisingly often, it does.
What poets can take from this
- Use cretics for slogans, refrains and commands, where double emphasis earns its keep.
- Place a cretic at a line end when you want the close to feel struck rather than settled.
- Keep cretic runs short; the ear tires quickly under so many stresses.
- Hunt for natural cretics in speech, phrases like time to go and hard to say.
- Contrast cretics with lighter feet nearby so their weight stays audible.
Try it yourself
Write a protest chant or work song of eight short lines, each line built on one or two cretic feet, then read it aloud and adjust any line your breath cannot support.
Questions
What is the difference between a cretic and an amphibrach?
They are opposites. A cretic stresses the outer syllables, DUM-da-DUM, as in here and now. An amphibrach stresses the middle, da-DUM-da, as in umbrella. One frames a light syllable; the other cushions a heavy one.
Is cretic the same as amphimacer?
Yes, the two terms name the same foot. Amphimacer is the descriptive Greek label meaning long on both sides; cretic honours the island of Crete, associated with the rhythm in antiquity. Modern handbooks use the names interchangeably.
Can English poems be written entirely in cretics?
Short chants and refrains can sustain it, but longer poems rarely do, because the foot's two stresses out of three syllables demand more vocal weight than extended reading comfortably allows. It works best as seasoning.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.