heroic couplet


nounProsody.
  1. a stanza consisting of two rhyming lines in iambic pentameter, especially one forming a rhetorical unit and written in an elevated style, as, Know then thyself, presume not God to scan / The proper study of Mankind is Man.

Origin of heroic couplet

1
First recorded in 1900–05

Words Nearby heroic couplet

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How to use heroic couplet in a sentence

  • It owes its place to its sustained vigour, and the fact that the heroic couplet is in the hands of a master.

  • The "Fragments of College Exercises" show a futile attempt to wield the heroic couplet with sonorous rhetoric.

    Thomas Moore | Stephen Gwynn
  • It is doubtful whether the heroic couplet has ever been more finely handled.

  • In versification Hunts aim was to bring back into use the earlier form of the rhymed English decasyllabic or heroic couplet.

    Keats | Sidney Colvin
  • The line of the heroic couplet is not long enough to reproduce the hexameter, and Virgil is especially succinct.

British Dictionary definitions for heroic couplet

heroic couplet

noun
  1. prosody a verse form consisting of two rhyming lines in iambic pentameter

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