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
M. Paul de Musset does not relate that his brother began to versify in his infancy; but Alfred was indeed hardly more than an infant when he achieved his first success.
From The Galaxy, June 1877 Vol. XXIII.—June, 1877.—No. 6. by Various
Do you think I want to come back in a year and still be able to versify my grief like that?
From Plashers Mead A Novel by MacKenzie, Compton
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
Hefty, curly-haired Poet Coffin is 44, a professor of English at Wells College, Aurora, N. Y. He boasts of having versified simultaneously for popular Ladies' Home Journal and the highbrow Nation.
From Time Magazine Archive
An NBC cynic has versified: "Nobody's brow furrows like Edward R. Murrow's."
From Time Magazine Archive
It has been made into a romance by Hoffman, and is versified by Trinius.
From Curious Myths of the Middle Ages by Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
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
‘He has,’ said Curll, ‘a knack at versifying; but in prose I think myself a match for him.’
From Calamities and Quarrels of Authors by Disraeli, Isaac
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.
