quatrain
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of quatrain
1575–85; < French, equivalent to quatre four (< Latin quattuor ) + -ain < Latin -ānus -an
Explanation
In poetry, a stanza is like a paragraph, and a quatrain is a stanza of exactly four lines, often with an alternating rhyme pattern. Here’s a quatrain from the poem “Dreams” by Langston Hughes: “Hold fast to dreams / For when dreams go / Life is a barren field / Frozen with snow.” Most quatrains use alternating rhyme, like here with go and snow, and all quatrains have four lines, which explains why the French root of the word is quatre, meaning “four.” A quatrain can be one part of a long poem or an entire poem can be one quatrain — the choice is yours.
Vocabulary lists containing quatrain
Reading: Literature - Poetry - Middle School
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Poetry: Structure and Meter
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Shakespeare
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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:
One visitor from the United States, Rupert Flowers, told the state-run Anadolu Agency that he traveled to Konya, inspired by Rumi’s best-known and welcoming quatrain:
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 21, 2021
A fixed form of nineteen lines: five tercets, a concluding quatrain, and a rhyme scheme tight enough to keep any feeling from spilling over the borders.
From The New Yorker ● Feb. 26, 2017
He loves to violate the fourth rhyme in a quatrain, then rhyme the next couplet with the offending word.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 9, 2016
After finishing the opening quatrain, he declaimed the names of the victims of the Charleston shooting, the band replying each time with a relieved organ flourish.
From New York Times ● Dec. 29, 2015
Which is why the epigraph of this book is the quatrain from the famous Christmas carol.
From "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
Heyward’s quatrains mingle hope and irony, serenity and unease.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 5, 2025
That, more than the quatrains of Omar Khayyam or the gorgeous rugs of Kerman, is the soft power that matters to Tehran.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 19, 2022
Miraculously, Dawn arrived at this family gathering with valentines for each of us: heavy stock cards on which she’d painted pastel animals and written sweet quatrains.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 12, 2019
The Arabic of “Frozen” is frozen in time, as “localized” to contemporary Middle Eastern youth culture as Latin quatrains in French rap.
From The New Yorker ● May 30, 2014
“Quite so, and the ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ is written in quatrains as well, four lines to a stanza.”
From "The Interrupted Tale" by Maryrose Wood
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.
