free verse
Americannoun
-
free verses
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of free verse
First recorded in 1905–10
Compare meaning
How does free-verse compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
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.
Mr. Power’s previous books have mostly been about 18th-century writers, yet he is as much at home with recent free verse as with rhymed couplets and sonnets.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
I’ve been in a fight with my husband about free verse versus poetic form.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 11, 2026
It spans 22 panels, down which Cendrars’s free verse runs in 30 different typefaces.
From New York Times ● Aug. 3, 2023
He wrote her postmodern poems — written in free verse, which she had never read before — and taught her how to write her own.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 5, 2022
Feeling for the first time that I could speak to listening ears, I wrote a wild, crude poem in free verse, coining images of black hands playing, working, holding bayonets, stiffening finally in death ...
From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
