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Literature vocabulary · Poetry

Verse

Meaning in literature, with examples

/vɜːs/nounCore term

In literature, verse means: Writing arranged in lines with a rhythm, as opposed to prose; also a single line of a poem or a group of lines in a song.

In Turkish: nazım, manzum yazı, dize, şiir

How it is used

In criticism it usually names the form: written in verse, verse drama, a verse novel. Kinds of verse include blank verse (unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter) and free verse. In songs and hymns, 'verse' means a stanza, as opposed to the chorus.

Example sentences

  1. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in verse, but not all of them.

  2. The novel ends with a few lines of verse that the dying father wrote.

Common collocations

  • written in verse
  • blank verse
  • free verse
  • verse drama
  • lines of verse
  • poetryLiterary writing arranged in lines that uses rhythm, sound, imagery and often rhyme to express feelings and ideas in a concentrated way.
  • proseOrdinary written language in sentences and paragraphs, without the line breaks and regular rhythm of poetry; the form of most novels, stories and essays.
  • stanzaA group of lines in a poem, separated from other groups by a space, that works like a paragraph in prose.
  • free versePoetry that does not follow a regular meter or rhyme scheme, relying instead on natural speech rhythms, line breaks and imagery.
  • meterA regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry, measured in units called feet, such as the iamb (da-DUM) or the trochee (DUM-da).

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Poetry

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