QUATRAIN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does quatrain mean? 

• QUATRAIN (noun)
  The noun QUATRAIN has 1 sense:

1. a stanza of four lines

  Familiarity information: QUATRAIN used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• QUATRAIN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A stanza of four lines

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("quatrain" is a kind of...):

stanza (a fixed number of lines of verse forming a unit of a poem)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "quatrain"):

elegiac stanza (a quatrain in iambic pentameter with abab rhyme scheme)

heroic stanza (a quatrain consisting of two heroic couplets written in an elevated style; the rhyme scheme is abab)

 Context examples 

I was interested as to which quatrain he would like best, and was not surprised when he hit upon the one born of an instant’s irritability, and quite at variance with the Persian’s complacent philosophy and genial code of life:

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Possibly I recited with a certain joyous lilt which was my own, for—his memory was good, and at a second rendering, very often the first, he made a quatrain his own—he recited the same lines and invested them with an unrest and passionate revolt that was well-nigh convincing.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)