elegiac stanza

American

noun

a four-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming alternately.

elegiac stanza British

noun

prosody a quatrain in iambic pentameters with alternate lines rhyming

"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

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

They possess a characteristic grace, which can never belong to three elegiac stanzas, closing with a couplet.”

From Project Gutenberg

We are much afraid that the tendency of the present age towards the facetious has contributed not a little to the dearth of sonnets and the extermination of the elegiac stanza.

From Project Gutenberg

I wrapped it in paper in which a few elegiac stanzas were inscribed in my own hand, and with my utmost elegance of penmanship.

From Project Gutenberg

I am very merry, and have just been writing some elegiac stanzas on the death of Sir P. Parker.

From Project Gutenberg

A quatrain consisting of iambic pentameter verse with alternate rhymes is called an elegiac stanza.

From Project Gutenberg

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023