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villanelle

American  
[vil-uh-nel] / ˌvɪl əˈnɛl /

noun

Prosody.

  1. a short poem of fixed form, written in tercets, usually five in number, followed by a final quatrain, all being based on two rhymes.

villanelle British  
/ ˌvɪləˈnɛl /

noun

  1. a verse form of French origin consisting of 19 lines arranged in five tercets and a quatrain. The first and third lines of the first tercet recur alternately at the end of each subsequent tercet and both together at the end of the quatrain

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of villanelle

1580–90; < French < Italian; see villanella, -elle

Explanation

A villanelle is a 19-line poem with a fixed form, including two repeated rhymes and two refrains. If you memorize a villanelle and recite it in class, your English teacher will be very impressed! The villanelle got its start as a poetic ballad influenced by a rustic Italian song called a villanella. Though the form has evolved, it still includes song-like refrains, giving the poem a musical sound. A villanelle has five stanzas of tercets, or three lines, and one quatrain (four lines). One of the most well-known villanelles in English is Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night."

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Vocabulary lists containing villanelle

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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.

For my first experiment, I had the A.I. write a villanelle, a rather difficult poetic form, about the death of a pet gerbil.

From Slate • Dec. 13, 2022

In “Missing Dates,” a haunting villanelle about helpless love and despair, William Empson writes: “Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills./ The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.”

From Washington Post • Mar. 10, 2020

She’d fought to master the loss, writing seventeen quickly successive drafts of an exactingly structured villanelle, a form with origins in the French Baroque.

From The New Yorker • Feb. 26, 2017

Her work combines free verse with more traditional forms like the sonnet and the villanelle to explore memory and the racial legacy of America.

From New York Times • Jun. 7, 2012

“Mine have poetic meter. A villanelle, actually,” Beowulf added modestly.

From "The Long-Lost Home" by Maryrose Wood

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.