Abstract
Crasis is the contraction of a word-final and a word-initial vowel naturally originating from oral speech and used by poets for metrical purposes.
Crasis (krâsis, a ‘mixture’ of two vowels) as a phonetic phenomenon of metrics (Metron; Metrical Laws) is a kind of spontaneous sound change which naturally originates in oral language and affects a word-final and a word-initial vowel, the latter immediately following the former, in causing a contraction of both, but with different results (Vowel Changes). This sound change is …