ottava rima
an Italian stanza of eight lines, each of eleven syllables (or, in the English adaptation, of ten or eleven syllables), the first six lines rhyming alternately and the last two forming a couplet with a different rhyme: used in Keats' Isabella and Byron's Don Juan.
Origin of ottava rima
1Words Nearby ottava rima
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use ottava rima in a sentence
That the ottava rima on the one hand, and the sonnet on the other, may have suggested the idea of it is quite possible.
A History of English Literature | George SaintsburyThe ottava rima of the Italians, the natural outcome of Keats's turning to Italy for his story.
Keats: Poems Published in 1820 | John KeatsBoccaccio's favourite stanza in the Teseide, known as the ottava rima, ends with two lines that form an heroic couplet.
Chaucer's Works, Volume 3 (of 7) | Geoffrey ChaucerIt is in ottava rima, with the translation prefixed to it of the Latin poem Furor Petroniensis.
The plays are almost uniformly written in ottava rima, and poorly printed in double columns.
Early Illustrated Books | Alfred W. Pollard
British Dictionary definitions for ottava rima
/ (ˈriːmə) /
prosody a stanza form consisting of eight iambic pentameter lines, rhyming a b a b a b c c
Origin of ottava rima
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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