poet
noun
a person who composes poetry.
poet
1 American
[poh-it]
/ ˈpoʊ ɪt /
poet.
2
American
abbreviation
-
poetic.
-
poetical.
-
poetry.
poet
British
/ ˈpəʊɪt /
noun
-
a person who writes poetry
-
a person with great imagination and creativity
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of poet
1250–1300; Middle English poete < Latin poēta < Greek poiētḗs poet, literally, maker, equivalent to poiē-, variant stem of poieîn to make + -tēs agent noun suffix
Explanation
If you’re a poet and you know it, you’re someone who writes poems. Poets have been charming people with their words ever since Orpheus sang his way to Hades and back. A poet is a writer who regularly publishes poems, but a poet can also be anyone who uses language creatively. Try it! The root of poet can be traced back to the Greek poein, "to make." Some poets write in carefully metered, rhyming lines, while others compose looser prose poems or "free verse," and the very best poets convey something that's essential or true. The Romantic poet William Wordsworth described good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
Vocabulary lists containing poet
Reading: Literature - Poetry - Introductory
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Reading: Literature - Poetry - Middle School
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Reading: Literature - Middle School
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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.
See Examples For:
Anne Carson, the Canadian poet, essayist, professor of classics and translator, has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in literature.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2026
Earlier this week, the prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry and literature were announced in Stockholm, with the latter going to Canadian poet Anne Carson on Thursday for her modern twists on Greek mythology and antiquity.
From Barron's ● Oct. 9, 2026
At one point he passes by “Cloudcuckoo-city,” high above the earth, and remarks: “I was put in mind of Aristophanes, a wise and truthful poet whose works are quite unreasonably distrusted.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
Canadian poet Anne Carson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for her “bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026
Virgil too is the only poet who gives clearly the geography of the underworld.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
"To find beauty in ugliness is the province of the poet. The most beautiful defeat of my career."
From BBC ● Apr. 23, 2025
“But I love that song so much. It makes me feel like I’m living in a dream. She’s my favorite poet. I adore her.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2023
I realized, “Oh, the character is a poet. I’m going to step aside and let you, a poet, inhabit the character.”
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2023
“With both of those people there is what you might call a touch of the poet. They go deep very quickly and effortlessly. It’s not flimflam,” says Branagh.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 12, 2021
“Nope. Not a poet. No picture book empire.”
From "What If It's Us" by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera
It references a number of the city's poets, the punk explosion and bands and clubs of the time.
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
Under the Soviet Union, dissident artists, poets and creators distributed their work within small, private networks, according to Ingold.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2026
Gerd believes it's important to look both to the future and to a history before the Nazi era, when German-speaking lands were known as a place of "poets and thinkers."
From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026
Ashbery lived much of his life among painters as well as poets.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026
In my account I have followed the stories given by the two tragic poets and by Theocritus, rather than Pindar, one of the most difficult of poets to translate or even to paraphrase.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
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.
