verso

American  

[vur-soh] / ˈvɜr soʊ /

noun

Printing.

• versos
  plural

1. a left-hand page of an open book or manuscript (opposed to recto).

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verso British  

/ ˈvɜːsəʊ /

noun

1. 1. the back of a sheet of printed paper

   2. Also called: reverso.  the left-hand pages of a book, bearing the even numbers Compare recto

2. the side of a coin opposite to the obverse; reverse

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• versos
  plural

Etymology

Origin of verso

1830–40; short for Latin in versō foliō on the turned leaf

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

verso versos

“Sobekmose,” a masterwork containing about 100 spells, is unusual, in part, because it’s inscribed recto and verso.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 30, 2026

Some of his notes are literally scrawled on the back—the verso in artistic terms—of the art, while others were clearly composed and submitted when the pieces were given over to the Navy.

From Slate ● Jun. 6, 2025

Exterior becomes interior — or verso becomes recto — in Leedham’s wittily jumbled tableaux.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 23, 2022

The lawsuit claimed that agreements signed by the jewelers contained illegible contract text in verso and therefore “cannot be binding.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2022

The verso of the flute parts are all blank so I have paper in abundance again.

From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein

Behind the talk of versos and rectos is the awareness that big money is moving into the market.

From Time Magazine Archive

“I’ve been looking for it everywhere, and I could really use some versos sencillos right now.”

From "The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora" by Pablo Cartaya

Next day, which was Easter Sunday, the Spaniards heard that at a certain point there was a large joanga belonging to the same king, and three versos.

From The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 22 of 55 1625-29 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century. by James Alexander Robertson

Our men captured three versos and two falcons, one hundred and fifty muskets and arquebuses, and a flag which the enemy had captured from us in the shipyard.

From The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 22 of 55 1625-29 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century. by James Alexander Robertson

These are surely the versos of an attorney’s clerk ‘penning a stanza when he should engross’.

From English Critical Essays Nineteenth Century by Edmund David Jones

Related Words

• reversal