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Verse   /vərs/   Listen
noun
Verse  n.  
1.
A line consisting of a certain number of metrical feet (see Foot, n., 9) disposed according to metrical rules. Note: Verses are of various kinds, as hexameter, pentameter, tetrameter, etc., according to the number of feet in each. A verse of twelve syllables is called an Alexandrine. Two or more verses form a stanza or strophe.
2.
Metrical arrangement and language; that which is composed in metrical form; versification; poetry. "Such prompt eloquence Flowed from their lips in prose or numerous verse." "Virtue was taught in verse." "Verse embalms virtue."
3.
A short division of any composition. Specifically:
(a)
A stanza; a stave; as, a hymn of four verses. Note: Although this use of verse is common, it is objectionable, because not always distinguishable from the stricter use in the sense of a line.
(b)
(Script.) One of the short divisions of the chapters in the Old and New Testaments. Note: The author of the division of the Old Testament into verses is not ascertained. The New Testament was divided into verses by Robert Stephens (or Estienne), a French printer. This arrangement appeared for the first time in an edition printed at Geneva, in 1551.
(c)
(Mus.) A portion of an anthem to be performed by a single voice to each part.
4.
A piece of poetry. "This verse be thine."
Blank verse, poetry in which the lines do not end in rhymes.
Heroic verse. See under Heroic.



verb
Verse  v. t.  (past & past part. versed; pres. part. versing)  To tell in verse, or poetry. (Obs.) "Playing on pipes of corn and versing love."



Verse  v. i.  To make verses; to versify. (Obs.) "It is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Verse" Quotes from Famous Books



... state seal. These books, in fact, had been kept so long, that, like port wine superannuated, they had lost their flavor and body. [Footnote: 'Like port wine superannuated, the Sibylline books had lost their flavor and their body.'—There is an allegoric description in verse, by Mr. Rogers, of an ice-house, in which winter is described as a captive, &c., which is memorable on this account, that a brother poet, on reading the passage, mistook it, (from not understanding the allegorical expressions,) ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... There were twelve Latin lines on his grave. His successor, Alexander Nowell, who died in 1601 at the age of ninety, was a zealous promoter of the Reformation. There was a fine monument to him, a bust in fur robe, and very long Latin inscriptions in prose and verse. ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... isn't just the thing to put your name to a valentine, they tell me, but this is something deeper and more poetic than such things usually are. It means mischief, as Cousin Dempster says. It is a proposal, buried in roses and veiled in sweet and modest verse, such as a lady might almost send at any time with a few blushes. It will reach him out in that vast wilderness of dead grass, where he has been deluded off by Mr. Sheridan, and has risked his precious life in a terrific ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... Bench, which controls it absolutely. Poetry has taken possession of this social theme, "the man condemned to death"—a subject truly apt to strike the imagination! And poetry has been sublime on it. Prose has no resource but fact; still, the fact is appalling enough to hold its own against verse. The existence of a condemned man who has not confessed his crime, or betrayed his accomplices, is one of fearful torment. This is no case of iron boots, of water poured into the stomach, or of limbs racked by hideous machinery; it is hidden and, so to speak, negative torture. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... be expected, Persia very early had cottons and calicoes imported from India. In the sixth verse of the first chapter of Esther definite reference is made to the use to which cotton was put at the feasts which King Ahasuerus gave about 519 B.C. "White, green, and blue hangings" are said to have been used on this occasion, and from authorities who have specially investigated ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson


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