versify
Americanverb (used with object)
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to relate, describe, or treat (something) in verse.
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to convert (prose or other writing) into metrical form.
verb (used without object)
verb
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(tr) to render (something) into metrical form or verse
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(intr) to write in verse
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of versify
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English versifien, from Old French versifier, from Latin versificāre; see verse, -ify
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 fact, I noted that Yarlexis may have benefited from a lack of facility with English in this case—some of those other queens were trying to versify overstuffed lines that made this English major cringe!
From Slate ● Nov. 13, 2012
But in the evenings, France's Secretary for Foreign Affairs continued to versify.
From Time Magazine Archive
If history's most absorbent author needed high legal drama, he had only to versify the royal squabbles in Holinshed's Chronicles.
From Time Magazine Archive
Captain Grose, the antiquary, who was collecting materials for his “Antiquities of Scotland,” published in 1789-91, got Burns to versify it and give it to him.
From Playful Poems by Henry Morley
Then, as they get on, we versify, for the better impressing their memories, the sayings of wise men, the deeds of old time, or moral tales.
From Works of Lucian of Samosata — Volume 03 by F. G. (Francis George) Fowler
Paraphrased and versified, some of Hardwick’s letters, along with her spoken words from that supposedly merry phone call of June 25, 1970, would find their way into the book, without her permission.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 9, 2019
The bounce of this versified self-portrait — there are six more stanzas — is quite irresistible, as T.S.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 11, 2018
Thus wrote super-Pan Italian poet-soldier-philanderer Gabriele d'Annunzio, not long ago, and his versified words, deep cut in granite, now adorn the Brenner Monument.
From Time Magazine Archive
An NBC cynic has versified: "Nobody's brow furrows like Edward R. Murrow's."
From Time Magazine Archive
In a history of our vernacular literature, the introduction of a versified psalter and of psalm-singing forms an incident; as the passion for psalmody itself is a portion of the history of the Reformation.
From Amenities of Literature Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature by Isaac Disraeli
Preparing the text has been a process of “distillation, musicalizing some phrasings and versifying some lines.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 23, 2020
Still, Gioia admits that you can’t successfully capture live-action versifying in a book.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 2, 2019
It’s true we sometimes drop the ball— Our meter’s off or badly blown, Our rhymes so slant as to be prone— The versifying lacks a lot.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 17, 2018
Artfully arranged words, lofty and lowdown, are the weapons of choice in “ToasT,” Lemon Andersen’s ambitious and unwieldy new play about versifying behind bars, which opened on Tuesday night at the Public Theater.
From New York Times ● May 5, 2015
This gave rise to the practice of versifying the Psalms.
From The Story of Our Hymns by Ernest Edwin Ryden
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.
