prose
Americannoun
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proses
plural
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the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse.
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matter-of-fact, commonplace, or dull expression, quality, discourse, etc.
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Liturgy. a hymn sung after the gradual, originating from a practice of setting words to the jubilatio of the alleluia.
adjective
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of, in, or pertaining to prose.
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commonplace; dull; prosaic.
verb (used with object)
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proses,
present (3rd person singular)
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prosed,
past participle, past
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prosing
present participle
verb (used without object)
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proses,
present (3rd person singular)
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prosed,
past participle, past
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prosing
present participle
noun
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spoken or written language as in ordinary usage, distinguished from poetry by its lack of a marked metrical structure
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a passage set for translation into a foreign language
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commonplace or dull discourse, expression, etc
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RC Church a hymn recited or sung after the gradual at Mass
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(modifier) written in prose
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(modifier) matter-of-fact
verb
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to write or say (something) in prose
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(intr) to speak or write in a tedious style
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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prosesimple
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prosessimple
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have prosedperfect
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has prosedperfect
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am prosingprogressive
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are prosingprogressive
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is prosingprogressive
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have been prosingperfect progressive
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has been prosingperfect progressive
Past
-
prosedsimple
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had prosedperfect
-
was prosingprogressive
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were prosingprogressive
-
had been prosingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of prose
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin prōsa (ōrātiō), literally, “straightforward (speech),” feminine of prōsus, prōrsus, contraction of prōversus “turned forward,” past participle of prōvertere “to turn forward,” equivalent to prō- pro- 1 + vertere “to turn”
Explanation
Prose is so-called "ordinary writing" — made up of sentences and paragraphs, without any metrical (or rhyming) structure. If you write, "I walked about all alone over the hillsides," that's prose. If you say, "I wondered lonely as a cloud/that floats on high o'er vales and hills" that's poetry. See the difference? (Let's not get into prose poetry!) From prose we get the term prosaic, meaning "ordinary" or "commonplace," or lacking the specially delicacy and beauty of its supposed opposite — poetry.
Vocabulary lists containing prose
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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Literary Terms, Grade 6, Unit 1
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Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie
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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:
On Tuesday, Seyfried shared a piece of prose by poet and author Bianca Sparacino on her Instagram stories that read:
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2026
Yet however avant-garde in form, Saramago’s prose achieves an expert fluidity.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
Musk also offered Trumpian prose: “Gutless Gibney’s fatal flaw of fabricating a false film.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026
Like him, she boasts an immaculate prose style, a dry wit and a taste for narrative legerdemain.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
Emma could not have desired a more spirited rejection of Mr. Martin’s prose.
From "Emma" by Jane Austen
It contains drawings and proses which have nothing but a formal, not an illustrative or explanatory, relation to each other.
From Time Magazine Archive
Never mind how the pedagogue proses, You want not antiquity's stamp; The lip, that such fragrance discloses, Oh! never should smell of the lamp.
From The Home Book of Verse — Volume 4 by Burton Egbert Stevenson
It was Fun to write jolly compositions and Fun to set proses out of George Meredith which bore no relation to classical thought or idiom and couldn't conceivably be translated into reasonable Latin or Greek.
From Years of Plenty by Ivor Brown
Free interchange of poetries and proses, of heroic sentiments and opinions, between the Unique of Sages and the Paragon of Crown-Princes; how charming to both!
From History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 10 by Thomas Carlyle
I never yawn when he proses, and his daughter does.
From Armadale by Wilkie Collins
A similar bill prosed in the Senate would change visitation restrictions specifically for nursing homes, although the measure has not yet been placed on the Legislature’s agenda.
From Washington Times ● Feb. 3, 2021
By far the most important portion of what one calls education, I owe to him; yet he never preached, or prosed, or played the pedagogue.
From McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 3, February 1896 by Various
But I think I have prosed enough for one sitting, and it is growing late—one o’clock, as I am a living sinner!—and you must be growing tired.
From The Adventures of Dick Maitland A Tale of Unknown Africa by Alec Ball
Commend us to one picturesque, garrulous old fellow, like Froissart, or Philip de Comines, or Bishop Burnet, before all the philosophic prosers that ever prosed.
From The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg by James Hogg
He prosed away about that until I had to yawn, but they seemed to like it.
From Pixie O'Shaughnessy by William H. C. Groome
Most of the time all the spectator sees is Spencer Tracy sitting in a rowboat and mumbling to himself, and all he hears is Hemingway's own narrative prosing along the sound track.
From Time Magazine Archive
Here Esau, who had his deck shoes on, seeing what sort of a mood John was in, stole away quietly towards the cabin, and left him prosing on to the German Ocean.
From Three in Norway by Two of Them by Walter J. Clutterbuck
You may thank your stars that I do not give way to my inclination, for you would have more prosing than you would care to read.
From Memoir of Mary L. Ware, Wife of Henry Ware, Jr. by Edward B. Hall
On this head we suffer much good-natured prosing in ourselves and others.
From About London by J. Ewing (James Ewing) Ritchie
“And I shall be deservedly hanged,” say you, wishing to put an end to this prosing.
From Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges by George Saintsbury
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.
