heroic couplet
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
1Words Nearby heroic couplet
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
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 Aeneid of Virgil | VirgilThe "Fragments of College Exercises" show a futile attempt to wield the heroic couplet with sonorous rhetoric.
Thomas Moore | Stephen GwynnIt 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 ColvinThe line of the heroic couplet is not long enough to reproduce the hexameter, and Virgil is especially succinct.
Early Theories of Translation | Flora Ross Amos
British Dictionary definitions for heroic couplet
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
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