rondeau
Americannoun
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Prosody. a short poem of fixed form, consisting of 13 or 10 lines on two rhymes and having the opening words or phrase used in two places as an unrhymed refrain.
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a 13th-century monophonic song form consisting of two phrases, each repeated several times, and occurring in the 14th and 15th centuries in polyphonic settings.
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a 17th-century musical form consisting of a refrain alternating with contrasting couplets, developing in the 18th century into the sonata-rondo form.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of rondeau
1515–25; < Middle French: little circle; see rondel
Vocabulary lists containing rondeau
Poetry: Genres
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Reading: Literature - Poetry - High 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:
In a large skillet or rondeau, heat olive oil until hot.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 28, 2023
My grandpa would listen to bob rondeau through his headphones.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 26, 2020
But isn't that permissiveness exactly what makes America work: this messy mix, this barbaric yawp, this redneck rondeau, this rude commingling?
From Time ● Jan. 28, 2014
Add onions, celery and carrot to the rondeau or braising pan and sweat, about 5 minutes.
From New York Times ● Jul. 26, 2012
I play the rondeau again, and I am Amelia, fifth-grade trombonist, harmony to Madge’s melody, a mouse with a megaphone, shouting, I AM HERE!
From "Muffled" by Jennifer Gennari
Charles d’Orleans, that captive and captivating prince, wrote thousands of rondeaux; even before his time a gallant company of gentlemen composed the Livre des Cent Ballades, one hundred ballades, practically unreadable by modern men.
From Letters on Literature by Lang, Andrew
None of his poems—elegies, epistles, satires, songs, epigrams, rondeaux, pastorals, ballades—overwhelm us by their length; he was not a writer of vast imaginative ambitions.
From A History of French Literature Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. by Gosse, Edmund
The rondel, which Charles d'Orléans wrote with so much grace, he did not use, but his rondeaux are generally exquisite.
From A Short History of French Literature by Saintsbury, George
Heavens! man, do you remember the rondeaux and triolets I used to write to those pretty creatures back East?
From A Mountain Woman by Peattie, Elia Wilkinson
Well, my writer of rondeaux, I have but little time to spare.
From The Grey Cloak by Peirce, Thomas Mitchell
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.
