terza rima

American  

[tert-suh ree-muh, ter-tsah ree-mah] / ˈtɛrt sə ˈri mə, ˈtɛr tsɑ ˈri mɑ /

noun

Prosody.

1. an Italian form of iambic verse consisting of eleven-syllable lines arranged in tercets, the middle line of each tercet rhyming with the first and last lines of the following tercet.

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terza rima British  

/ ˈtɛətsə ˈriːmə /

noun

1. a verse form of Italian origin consisting of a series of tercets in which the middle line of one tercet rhymes with the first and third lines of the next

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Etymology

Origin of terza rima

1810–20; < Italian: third rhyme

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

terza rima

Clive James’s deft translation, published in 2013, restructures the work’s original terza rima into quatrains.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026

Kendrick Lamar might be influenced by Dante’s terza rima verse form!

From Washington Post ● Dec. 15, 2021

It’s written in rhymed triplets, a version of a form employed by the poets Chaucer and Dante called a terza rima.

From New York Times ● Sep. 26, 2020

And Dante’s “Inferno,” The Divine Comedy’s first section, was a shout, in terza rima, against a storm of religious and political turmoil in medieval Florence.

From Time ● Nov. 9, 2016

In spite of his admiration for the Italian poets, he never imitates their verse, except in one short passage where he copies the terza rima of Dante.

From Medieval English Literature Home University of Modern Knowledge #43 by W. P. (William Paton) Ker

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