Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One of the divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines usually characterized by a common pattern of meter, rhyme, and number of lines.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Pl. stanze (-ze). In architecture, an apartment or division in a building; a room or chamber: as, the stanze of Raphael in the Vatican.
- n. In versification, a series of lines arranged in a fixed order of sequence as regards their length, metrical form, or rimes, and constituting a typical group, or one of a number of similar groups, composing a poem or part of a poem. Stanza is often used interchangeably with strophe—strophe, however, being used preferably of ancient or quantitative, and stanza of modern or accentual and rimed poetry. In the latter the stanza often consists of lines identical in form throughout, the arrangement of rimes alone defining the group of lines. Such a stanza is not properly a strophe. A couplet is not regarded as a stanza, and a triplet is rarely so designated. Compare
verse . Abbreviated st.
Wiktionary
- n. A unit of a poem, written or printed as a paragraph; equivalent to a verse.
- n. architecture An apartment or division in a building.
- n. computing A structural element in XML
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A number of lines or verses forming a division of a song or poem, and agreeing in meter, rhyme, number of lines, etc., with other divisions; a part of a poem, ordinarily containing every variation of measure in that poem; a combination or arrangement of lines usually recurring, whether like or unlike, in measure.
- n. (Arch.) An apartment or division in a building; a room or chamber.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a fixed number of lines of verse forming a unit of a poem
Etymologies
- From Italian stanza. (Wiktionary)
- Italian; see stance. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“This stanza is the only one that, in both the letter text and the broadside version of Shelley's poem, replicates the idea of an entire stanza of The Devil's Thoughts by R. Southey and S.T. Coleridge (1799), which reads in a note to J.”
“I missed the one where I had to select a stanza from the national anthem.”
“The first stanza is about vitality, about life, about something precious that has been lost.”
“Recently, I understand, it has become the custom to omit this stanza from the English national anthem; but it is clear that this is because of its crudity of expression, not because of objection to the idea of praying to a god to assist one nation and injure others; for the same sentiment is expressed again and again in the most carefully edited of prayer-books:”
The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation
“To adopt a certain English stanza in which to render a certain Latin stanza wherever it occurs, is to do away with this natural advantage, which presents itself oftener than might at first be supposed.”
“It is strange to find English critics of this great if not greatest English poem even nowadays repeating that Spenser borrowed his wonderful stanza from the Italians.”
“[181] Line 3 in his stanza is the same length as Gerhardt's.”
Paul Gerhardt as a Hymn Writer and his Influence on English Hymnody
“That the words _Tylwyth Teg_ and _Ellyll_ are convertible terms appears from the following stanza, which is taken from the _Cambrian Magazine_, vol. ii, p. 58.”
Welsh Folk-Lore a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales
“One of the peculiarities of the stanza is the increased emphasis which the rime of the third verse receives from its proximity to that of the second; and this is noticeable both when there is a logical pause after the third verse and when there is none:”
“The meter of the last stanza, which is more irregular than the others, we can indicate as follows:”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘stanza’.
-
Language
word, sentence, novel, book, novella, vignette, memoir, anthology, paragraph, stanza, poem, haiku and 123 more...
-
Brand Theft Auto
A marque list for cars--models or companies who've used common words as their name.
explorer, navigator, frontier, mustang, quest, cougar, sidekick, legend, legacy, ranger, voyager, civic and 266 more...
-
Many Stands
grandstand, Custer's last stand, bandstand, witness stand, upstand, bedstand, Rostand, handstand, hardstand, headstand, newsstand, stillstand and 95 more...
-
common UA vocab. in US
Interesting, there is a traditional vocabulary of an Ukrainian, that differs from vocabulary of average American. It would be nice to explore it.
jackdaw, incongruous, cassock, vivid, magpie, humdrum, amongst, wonder, wandering, wheedling, wheedle, osseous and 368 more...
-
MUSIC - ALL TERMS
With focus on non-classical styles, but not excluding terms of the latter.
banjo, accompaniment, acoustic bass, bass guitar, bass clef, ground, brass, cornet, Mute, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, arrangement and 866 more...
-
Poetry Terms
April is National Poetry Month. Add your favorite poetry terms to this new list!
alliteration, anapest, alexandrine, caesura, assonance, ballad, blank verse, iamb, conceit, couplet, consonance, dactyl and 30 more...
-
big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
-
Hymnody
troparion, idiomelon, theotokion, kontakion, contakion, sticheron, isodicon, eisodicon, catabasia, katabasia, hymnology, canon and 24 more...
-
North American sports reporting
North American sports reporting seems to use vernacular to a much greater extent than its British equivalent. I think this is partly because of the stat-heavy nature of NA sports: reports would be ...
snap, dandy, author, nifty, rookie, storied, streak, ice, score a tally, shutout, blank, dish and 13 more...
-
NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
-
MsHalston's Words
theoretically, insufferable, apolitico, milquetoast, egregious, aplomb, elan, fraught, flummox, befrocked, moll, molten and 605 more...
-
GRE 3500 S
saccharine, sacrilegious, sacrosanct, sagacious, sage, salient, salutary, salvo, sanctimonious, sanguine, sap, sardonic and 138 more...
-
Words of Standing
steed, stool, estancia, stage, stance, staunch, stanch, stanchion, stanza, stative, stator, stay and 180 more...
-
ash
ash
abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, abject, abjure and 4874 more...
-
Permutations
There are 17576 different sequences of three letters (26 x 26 x 26). How many of them occur in words? General rules of engagement: mononyms only, lower case preferred to upper case, short preferred...
aaargh, niqaabi, Isaac, raad, baaed, haaf, laager, aah, kamaaina, Naajaat, aak, aalii and 637 more...
-
eloise's Words
embrace, perfect, imagine, dance, water, color, echo, hollow, sorrow, beauty, impossible, violet and 438 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for stanza.
yarb It could be hockey-specific. Football? Nah. You're probly right there. May 2, 2009
seanahan Is this hockey specific? It might also be used in basketball, but that would be the only other possible sport I would think. May 2, 2009
yarb In North American sports reporting, any of the regulation periods of a game:
"Salo's goal staved off a catastrophe for the home team, who allowed the Blackhawks to tie the game 3-3 after three goals in the first 14:31 of the final stanza."
- Canucks narrowly avert disaster, The Globe and Mail, May 1, 2009 May 1, 2009