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
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
But in the evenings, France's Secretary for Foreign Affairs continued to versify.
From Time Magazine Archive
But everybody else had realised that the trio was struggling for mastery, so without attempting to versify they kept their gaze fixed on them and gave way to laughter.
From Hung Lou Meng, Book II Or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel in Two Books by H. Bencraft Joly
She must first versify the fourth book of “The World as Will and Idea.”
From The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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
An NBC cynic has versified: "Nobody's brow furrows like Edward R. Murrow's."
From Time Magazine Archive
One friend, Poet Thomas Hearne, versified that he had collected for the good doctor: A snake skin which you may believe The serpent cast that tempted Eve.
From Time Magazine Archive
He learned to write and speak Persian with complete facility and Arabic with the utmost elegance; he versified, and his accomplishments included archery, horsemanship, and polo.
From A Literary History of the Arabs by Reynold Nicholson
The voices collected here elaborate and extend the mantras, such as Langston Hughes versifying his insistence that America live up to its myth, and James Baldwin defining protest as a duty.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 11, 2020
Preparing the text has been a process of “distillation, musicalizing some phrasings and versifying some lines.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 23, 2020
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
Thus Grant in Laura’s autograph album after all his versifying on the kitchen table could only write “Truly Yours” and leave her to define the deep significance of the phrase so obviously inverted.
From In the Heart of a Fool by William Allen White
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