/verrs/ , n., adj., v., versed, versing .
n.
1. (not in technical use) a stanza.
2. a succession of metrical feet written, printed, or orally composed as one line; one of the lines of a poem.
3. a particular type of metrical line: a hexameter verse.
4. a poem, or piece of poetry.
5. metrical composition; poetry, esp. as involving metrical form.
6. metrical writing distinguished from poetry because of its inferior quality: a writer of verse, not poetry.
7. a particular type of metrical composition: elegiac verse.
8. the collective poetry of an author, period, nation, etc.: Miltonian verse; American verse.
9. one of the short conventional divisions of a chapter of the Bible.
10. Music.
a. that part of a song following the introduction and preceding the chorus.
b. a part of a song designed to be sung by a solo voice.
11. Rare. a line of prose, esp. a sentence, or part of a sentence, written as one line.
12. Rare. a subdivision in any literary work.
adj.
13. of, pertaining to, or written in verse: a verse play.
v.i.
14. versify.
v.t.
15. to express in verse.
[ bef. 900; ME vers ( e ), fers line of poetry, section of a psalm, OE fers versus a row, line (of poetry), lit., a turning, equiv. to vert ( ere ) to turn (ptp. versus ) + -tus suffix of v. action, with dt > s; akin to -WARD, WORTH 2 ]
Syn. 1. VERSE, STANZA, STROPHE, STAVE are terms for a metrical grouping in poetic composition. VERSE is often mistakenly used for STANZA, but is properly only a single metrical line. A STANZA is a succession of lines (verses) commonly bound together by a rhyme scheme, and usually forming one of a series of similar groups that constitute a poem: The four-line stanza is the one most frequently used in English.
STROPHE (originally the section of a Greek choral ode sung while the chorus was moving from right to left) is in English poetry practically equivalent to "section"; a STROPHE may be unrhymed or without strict form, but may be a stanza: Strophes are divisions of odes. STAVE is a word (now seldom used) that means a stanza set to music or intended to be sung: a stave of a hymn; a stave of a drinking song. 4, 5, 6 . See poetry .