verse
Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
verse/vɜːs/
▶noun
- 1 writing arranged with a metrical rhythm, typically having a rhyme.
■ archaic a line of poetry.
- 2 a group of lines forming a unit in a poem or song.
- 3 each of the short numbered divisions of a chapter in the Bible or other scripture.
- 4 a versicle.
■ a passage in an anthem for a soloist or a small group of voices.
– derivatives
verselet noun.
verselet noun.
– origin OE fers, from L. versus ‘a turn of the plough, a furrow, a line of writing’, from vertere ‘to turn’; reinforced in ME by OFr. vers.
'verse' also found in these Oxford entries:
acrostic
- alcaic
- alexandrine
- anacrusis
- anthology
- arid
- arsis
- bard
- blank verse
- cadence
- caesura
- catalectic
- chanson de geste
- chapter
- charm
- chorus
- clerihew
- couplet
- crambo
- dactylic
- diaeresis
- dimeter
- distich
- doggerel
- durchkomponiert
- elegiac couplet
- elegy
- end-stopped
- enjambement
- expletive
- free verse
- galliambic
- haiku
- hemistich
- hendecasyllable
- heptameter
- heroic
- heroic couplet
- heroic verse
- hexameter
- hokku
- iambic
- improvise
- jingle
- Leonine
- lyric
- macaronic
- macron
- memory
- occasional
