quatrain
Americannoun
noun
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.
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
But it was the title song that introduced Sondheim’s genius for compressing a worldview into a quatrain: “I like the Sunday Times all right,/But not in bed./Alive and alone on a Saturday night/Is dead.”
From New York Times • Mar. 12, 2020
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
In “Company,” she uncannily channels what could be a lost quatrain from W.H.
From Washington Post • Mar. 16, 2016
Which is why the epigraph of this book is the quatrain from the famous Christmas carol.
From "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
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.
