ballad stanza

American  

noun

Prosody.

1. 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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ballad stanza British  

noun

1. 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

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Etymology

Origin of ballad stanza

First recorded in 1930–35

Example Sentences

Once read, it stays in the head forever, in part because of the ballad stanza, so weirdly fresh in her capable hands.

From The Guardian

Ballad stanza.—Service metre broken up in the way just indicated.

From Project Gutenberg

But on account of its customary pause after the fourth foot, it very early broke into two short lines of four and three stresses each, and thus the septenary couplet became the ballad stanza.

From Project Gutenberg

The ballad stanza, with its frequent variations of internal rime and additional verses is excellently illustrated by Coleridge's Ancient Mariner.

From Project Gutenberg

It is a translation, in the ballad stanza, of the Latin elegiac poem of Dominicus Mancinus, De quatuor virtutibus, first published in 1516, and, as appears from the title, was executed while Barclay was a monk of Ely, at "the desire of the righte worshipfull Syr Giles Alington, Knight."

From Project Gutenberg