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)
-
prosed,
past participle, past
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prosing
present participle
noun
-
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
-
has been prosingperfect progressive
Past
-
prosedsimple
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had prosedperfect
-
was prosingprogressive
-
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:
Few critics praised Archer's prose style, his sense of humour, or the emotional depth of his characters.
From BBC ● Oct. 5, 2026
First OpenAI and then numerous other companies began offering large language models that could write prose, translate speech, produce videos on command and more.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
Writing in newspaper Canard Enchaine, Fabrice Colin also criticised the formulaic sentence structure and said he "vainly looked for a unique voice" in the prose.
From Barron's ● Sep. 25, 2026
Yet some readers online had criticized the book’s prose as overwrought, noting that parts sounded like AI, before the allegations erupted.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026
Structural parallelism works not just in poetic and hortatory passages but also in ordinary expository prose.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
It contains drawings and proses which have nothing but a formal, not an illustrative or explanatory, relation to each other.
From Time Magazine Archive
Sometimes he proses, and sometimes he runs to seed.
From Emerson and Other Essays by John Jay Chapman
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
He started by doing one prose and one "con" a week, instead of two proses and two "cons" like the rest of the form.
From The Loom of Youth by Alec Waugh
On how many evenings had the sadness of life been dissipated in listening to these proses chanted in the churches!
From En Route by J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
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
He still prosed on, wrapped up in his own eloquence.
From Rainbow Valley by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery
He prosed away and Martin regarded the literature he favoured.
From Years of Plenty by Ivor Brown
How he had argued and prosed for weeks as to whether they could afford these few days! although it was vacation, and Lufflin had sent free passes for the road.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 99, January, 1866 by Various
He prosed to me about a "home"; as if I could now endure a Darby and Joan existence!
From The Bacillus of Beauty A Romance of To-day by Harriet Stark
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
And now, while we are prosing away here, the other people are waiting for us over on the moraine yonder.
From Fordham's Feud by Bertram Mitford
A dull, sleepy, prosing minister is not the man for the west.
From Gleanings by the Way by John A. Clark
Pardon me, gentle reader, for all this prosing.
From My Unknown Chum by Charles Bullard Fairbanks
The first half volume is rather tiresome—giving us four times as much as necessary of the uncultivated youth's early prosing on crude moralities, etc.
From Harriet Martineau by Florence Fenwick Miller
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