verse

First recorded before 900; Middle English vers(e), fers “line of poetry, section of a psalm,” Old English fers, from Latin versus “a row, line (of poetry),” literally, “a turning,” equivalent to vert(ere), “to turn” (past participle versus) + -tus suffix of verbal action, with dt becoming s; akin to -ward, worth²

1. Verse, stanza, strophe, stave are terms for a metrical grouping in poetic composition. Verse is often mistakenly used for stanza, but is properly only a single metrical line. A stanza is a succession of lines (verses) commonly bound together by a rhyme scheme, and usually forming one of a series of similar groups that constitute a poem: The four-line stanza is the one most frequently used in English. Strophe (originally the section of a Greek choral ode sung while the chorus was moving from right to left) is in English poetry practically equivalent to “section”; a strophe may be unrhymed or without strict form, but may be a stanza: Strophes are divisions of odes. Stave is a word (now seldom used) that means a stanza set to music or intended to be sung: a stave of a hymn; a stave of a drinking song. 4-6. See poetry.