ballad stanza

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noun Prosody.

a four-line stanza consisting of unrhymed first and third lines in iambic tetrameter and rhymed second and fourth lines in iambic trimeter, often used in ballads.

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Origin of ballad stanza

First recorded in 1930–35

Words nearby ballad stanza

balladize, ballad metre, balladmonger, ballad opera, balladry, ballad stanza, ball ammunition, Ballance, ball and chain, ball-and-claw foot, ball and ring

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use ballad stanza in a sentence

This sultry ballad about break-ups and make-ups in the City of Angels is haunting stuff.
The 14 Best Songs of 2014: Bobby Shmurda, Future Islands, Drake, and More|Marlow Stern|December 31, 2014|DAILY BEAST
And it was a radical part of your tool set, throwing it into a ballad, which was also a canonized jazz standard.
Herbie Hancock Holds Forth|David Yaffe|November 8, 2014|DAILY BEAST
There were no longer any chord changes, and it was no longer a ballad.
Herbie Hancock Holds Forth|David Yaffe|November 8, 2014|DAILY BEAST
Toward the end, on the ballad “Someone Else,” she flies over the crowd while straddling a giant hot dog like Slim Pickens.
Miley Cyrus’s NBC Twerk-A-Thon: Tongues, Leotards, and Dwarfs, Oh My!|Marlow Stern|July 7, 2014|DAILY BEAST

M10 has a musical ballad named after him that the band Los Sembradores de La Sierra recorded in 2011.
U.S. Visas Helped Fuel the Juárez Drug Wars|Jason McGahan|July 1, 2014|DAILY BEAST
I asked him to tell me how he produced a certain effect he makes in his arrangement of the ballad in Wagner's Flying Dutchman.
Music-Study in Germany|Amy Fay
No further hints need be offered except perhaps in regard to the last ten lines of the last stanza.
Assimilative Memory|Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
One day her mother heard her singing a popular nautical ballad, on the devotion of a sailor's bride to her betrothed.
Skipper Worse|Alexander Lange Kielland
In order to shew the riming more clearly, I have 'set back' the 3rd, 6th, and 7th lines of each stanza.
Chaucer's Works, Volume 1 (of 7) -- Romaunt of the Rose; Minor Poems|Geoffrey Chaucer
Evidently this disclaimer is a pretended one; the preceding stanza and ll.
Chaucer's Works, Volume 1 (of 7) -- Romaunt of the Rose; Minor Poems|Geoffrey Chaucer

British Dictionary definitions for ballad stanza

ballad stanza

noun

a four-line stanza, often used in ballads, in which the second and fourth lines rhyme and have three stresses each and the first and third lines are unrhymed and have four stresses each

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012