sonnet

American  

[son-it] / ˈsɒn ɪt /

noun

1. Prosody. a poem, properly expressive of a single, complete thought, idea, or sentiment, of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to one of certain definite schemes, being in the strict or Italian form divided into a major group of 8 lines (the octave) followed by a minor group of 6 lines (the sestet), and in a common English form into 3 quatrains followed by a couplet.

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verb (used without object)

1. Archaic. to compose sonnets.

verb (used with object)

1. Older Use. to celebrate in a sonnet or sonnets.

sonnet British  

/ ˈsɒnɪt /

noun

1. a verse form of Italian origin consisting of 14 lines in iambic pentameter with rhymes arranged according to a fixed scheme, usually divided either into octave and sestet or, in the English form, into three quatrains and a couplet

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verb

1. (intr) to compose sonnets

2. (tr) to celebrate in a sonnet

sonnet Cultural  

1. A lyric poem of fourteen lines, often about love, that follows one of several strict conventional patterns of rhyme. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Keats, and William Shakespeare are poets known for their sonnets.

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Other Word Forms

• outsonnet
  verb (used with object)
• sonnetlike
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of sonnet

1550–60; < Italian sonnetto < Old Provençal sonet, equivalent to son poem (< Latin sonus sound ¹ ) + -et -et

Explanation

A sonnet is a poem, often a love poem, of 14 rhyming lines. Is that a love letter from your secret admirer or a formal sonnet? The word sonnet comes from the Italian sonetto, meaning “little song.” The origin makes sense, since the first sonnets were developed by the Italian poet Petrarch. But the sonnet form we are most familiar with today is Shakespearean. Many of the most often quoted lines in poetry come from Shakespeare’s sonnets, such as this ending couplet from Sonnet 18, “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

Example Sentences

GPT-4o achieved a score of 2.7 percent, while Claude 3.5 Sonnet reached 4.1 percent.

From Science Daily • Mar. 13, 2026

The tech giant said its Gemini 3 model outperformed OpenAI’s previous GPT-5.1 model and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 on a series of benchmarks.

From MarketWatch • Dec. 24, 2025

When Claudius v1 came online, there were only a handful of co-workers in the Slack channel, and the bot, powered by large language model Claude 3.7 Sonnet, was a stickler for the rules:

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 18, 2025

Anthropic last month launched its latest generative AI model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, which it says is the world's best for computer programming.

From Barron's • Oct. 23, 2025

“Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we’re disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare, and no one ends up remembering the person he wrote Sonnet Fifty-five about.”

From "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green

Related Words

• ballad
• composition
• epic
• lyric
• poetry
• rhyme
• verse
• writing