quatorzain
Mar. 13th, 2006 07:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordquatorzain - n., a fourteen-line poem, esp. a sonnet.
From French quatorze, fourteen, + -ain, an obscure suffix meaning stanza of that many lines. Currently, some try to make this mean any fourteen-line poem that ISN'T a sonnet, but originally it was used to distinguish the form we now call a sonnet from all the other "little songs" called sonnets.
---L.
From French quatorze, fourteen, + -ain, an obscure suffix meaning stanza of that many lines. Currently, some try to make this mean any fourteen-line poem that ISN'T a sonnet, but originally it was used to distinguish the form we now call a sonnet from all the other "little songs" called sonnets.
---L.
