quatrain

quatrain

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French quatrain.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkwɒt.ɹeɪn/

Noun

quatrain (plural quatrains)

1. A poem in four lines.
2. A stanza of four lines.

   Example:

   Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night,

   Has flung the Stone that puts the stars to flight:

   And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught

   The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of light.

   • 1894 December 26, The Sketch, page 396, column 1:

     The menu card was designed by Mr. Arthur Hacker, and further enriched by some charming verses in Omarian quatrains from Mr. Le Gallienne, who read them to a sympathetic audience.

Synonyms

• (four-line stanza): tetrastich

Translations

a stanza of four lines

Arabic: رُبَاعِيّ‎ m (rubāʿiyy) Armenian: please add this translation if you can Bulgarian: четиристишие n (četiristišie) Catalan: please add this translation if you can Chinese: Mandarin: 四行詩／四行诗 (zh) (sìhángshī), 四行連／四行连 (sìhánglián) Czech: čtyřverší n Danish: please add this translation if you can Dutch: kwatrijn (nl) n Estonian: katrään Finnish: nelisäe French: quatrain (fr) m Georgian: please add this translation if you can German: Quartett (de) n Hungarian: please add this translation if you can Indonesian: pantun (id) Italian: quartina (it) f Japanese: 四行連 (よんぎょうれん, yongyōren), クウォートレイン (kuwōtorein), クワトレイン (kuwatorein) Kurdish: Northern Kurdish: çarîne (ku) f Latvian: please add this translation if you can Lithuanian: katrenas m Persian: رباعی‎ (fa) (robâ'i) Polish: czterowiersz (pl) m, tetrastych m, kwartyna f Portuguese: quarteto (pt) m, quadra (pt) f Romanian: catren (ro) n Russian: четверости́шие (ru) n (četverostíšije), катре́н (ru) m (katrɛ́n) Serbo-Croatian: Cyrillic: катрен m Roman: katren (sh) m Spanish: cuarteto (es) Swedish: quatrain c, kvadernar, kvatrin c, fyrrading c Tagalog: kuwarteta Turkish: dörtlük (tr) Ukrainian: please add this translation if you can Vietnamese: thơ bốn câu Yiddish: please add this translation if you can

See also

• couplet
• tercet
• terzain
• cinquain
• sestet
• septet
• octave

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French

Etymology

From quatre (“four”) +‎ -ain.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ka.tʁɛ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

quatrain m (plural quatrains)

1. quatrain (stanza of four lines)

Further reading

• “quatrain”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.