tanka
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of tanka
1915–20; < Japanese < Middle Chinese, equivalent to Chinese duǎn short + gē song; cf. renga
Explanation
A tanka is a short Japanese poem with a total of 31 syllables. Traditionally, a tanka was written in one long line, but it's more common to find today's version divided into five lines. A tanka is a slightly longer version of the more familiar haiku. Most tankas take the form of five lines divided into five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables — if you feel hampered by the typical three brief lines of a haiku, you should try writing a tanka instead. In the 8th century AD, a tanka was simply a short poem (it means "short song" in Japanese), but the term was revived and modernized in the early 1900s.
Vocabulary lists containing tanka
Poetry: Genres
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Reading: Literature - Poetry - High School
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Poetry
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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:
As in the poetic form he preferred, the tanka, Miyazawa also closely observes the shifting landscape.
From New York Times ● Nov. 9, 2018
Whatever, it’s a variation on the ancient Japanese poetry called tanka, which are, roughly, 31-syllable poems in five lines; they begin with 5-7-5, as haiku do, then have two more lines of seven syllables each.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 5, 2015
Sagawa sounded different: she wrote in free verse, not tanka or haiku, and her images were shockingly new.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 18, 2015
The Lakota called the animal igmu tanka, “the great cat.” Puma concolor is its official taxonomic designation, but it has gone by many other names through the centuries: cougar, catamount, puma, wildcat, panther, shadow cat, painter.
From Salon ● Mar. 9, 2014
By dropping the "a" before "tanka" we have changed the name to Big Water.
From The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems by Gordon, Hanford Lennox
Those who do not win have another consolation: some may be invited to the Phoenix Hall of the Imperial Palace to hear the tankas composed by members of the Imperial family.
From Time Magazine Archive
He also composed tankas, the evocative 31-syllable poems of Japan.
From Time Magazine Archive
He remounted the bridge, and guided the steamer through the flotilla of junks, tankas, and fishing boats which crowd the harbour of Hong Kong.
From Around the World in 80 Days by Verne, Jules
He remounted the bridge, and guided the steamer through the flotilla of junks, tankas and fishing boats which crowded the harbor of Hong Kong.
From Around the World in 80 Days Junior Edition by Verne, Jules
At the port situated at the mouth of the Canton river was a regular confusion of ships of all nations, commercial and warlike: junks, sempas, tankas, and even flower-boats, like floating garden-borders.
From Round the World in Eighty Days by Verne, Jules
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.
