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Synonyms

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; villanella, -elle

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.

Elizabeth Bishop’s wrenching villanelle, “One Art,” can be seen this way.

From Washington Post • Jun. 11, 2020

But it’s also, low-key, a villanelle, a rhymed 19-line form with two lines that repeat identically in different places throughout the poem and come together to form its closing couplet.

From Slate • Aug. 8, 2019

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

She pivots formally, too, between hints of the sestina and the villanelle.

From New York Times • May 31, 2016

At the moment, he was attempting a villanelle, a poetic form more complex than even the most complicated dance step.

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.