prose
UK/ˈpɹəʊz//ˈpɹoʊz/
prose noun: language, particularly written language, not intended as poetry.
Noun
prose (usually uncountable, plural proses)
- Language, particularly written language, not intended as poetry.
- Though known mostly for her prose, she also produced a small body of excellent poems.
- ...Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow’d
Faft by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Ionian Mounts while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime...1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost (1st ed)
- Language which evinces little imagination or animation; dull and commonplace discourse.
- ...the vehicle is plodding prose, but the effect is none the less poignant. And in regard to this I may say that in a hundred places in Trollope the extremity of pathos is reached by the homeliest means.1888, Henry James, Partial Portraits, Macmillan
- A hymn with no regular meter, sometimes introduced into the Mass.
- Proses are parts of the Office of the Mass which are sung just before the Gospel, upon great Festivals. The French also call those Rhythmical Hymns Proses, which are sung in their Offices in the Church of Rome, in which Rhime only, and not Quantity of Syllables, is observed.1699, A new ecclesiastical history
Verb
prose (third-person singular simple present proses, present participle prosing, simple past and past participle prosed)
- To write or repeat in a dull, tedious, or prosy way.
- Pray, do not prose, good Ethelbert, but speak;
What is your purpose?1819, John Keats, Otho the Great, act I, scene II, verses 189-190 - Already he felt himself near to being a celebrity. He had astonished Eton. That was a good beginning. Papa might prose, knowing, of course, nothing of the poetry of caricature, of the wild joys and the laurels that crown the whimsical. So while Mr. Lane hunted adjectives, and ran sad-sounding and...1896, Robert Smythe Hichens, The Folly of Eustace
- Pray, do not prose, good Ethelbert, but speak;
Proper noun capitalized: Prose
Prose (plural Proses)
- A surname from German.
prose meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
prose in Hindi
- written language not intended as poetry
- गद्य gadya
prose in Tamil
- written language not intended as poetry
- உரைநடை urainaṭai
prose in Marathi
- गद्य
prose in Urdu
- written language not intended as poetry
- نثر nasr
More languagesFewer languages
- prose in Bengali
- গদ্য goddo
- prose in Telugu
- గద్యము gadyamu
- prose in Malayalam
- ഗദ്യം gadyaṁ
- prose in Kannada
- ಗದ್ಯ gadya
- prose in Punjabi
- نثر nas̱r, ਨਸਰ nasar
- prose in Gujarati
- ગદ્ય, ગદ્યકથન, ગદ્યકાવ્ય
- prose in Odia
- ଗଦ୍ଯ
- prose in Sanskrit
- गद्य gadya
- prose in Nepali
- गद्य
- prose in Pashto
- نثر nasr
- prose in Arabic
- نَثْر naṯr
- prose in Malay
- prosa
- prose in Indonesian
- prosa
- prose in Persian
- نثر nasr
- prose in Thai
- ร้อยแก้ว rɔ́ɔi-gɛ̂ɛo
- prose in Vietnamese
- văn xuôi
- prose in Myanmar
- စုဏ္ဏိယ cunni.ya.
Examples of prose in a sentence
- She was endeavoring to teach us the elements of a good prose style.
- He struggled with sentencing his frayed and angry verses from poem to prose.
- In technical communication, don't use prose to present information that lends itself to a tabular presentation.
Antonyms of prose
Forms of prose
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | proses |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | proses |
| present participle | prosing |
| past participle | prosed |
| past | prosed |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Proses |
Origin of prose
From Middle English prose, from Old French prose, from Latin prōsa (“straightforward”) from the term prōsa ōrātiō (“a straightforward speech – i.e. without the ornaments of verse”). further etymology and related terms The term prōsa (“straightforward”), a colloquial form of prorsa (“straight forwards”), the feminine form prorsus (“straight forwards”), from Old Latin prōvorsus (“moving straight ahead”), from pro- (“forward”) + vorsus (“turned”), form of vertō (“to turn”). Compare verse.
Borrowed from German Pröse, from a short form of the personal name Ambrose.
Words formed from prose
Phrases with prose
Words that rhyme with prose
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- interpose
- propose
- gloze
- oppose
- disclose
- foreclose
- snows
- turn up one's nose
- unclose
- adipose
- appose
- arose
- chose
- counterpose
- croze
- decompose
- doze
- enclose
- froze
- hoes
- knows
- adoze
- apollos
- beaus
- beprose
- blows
- bose
- bros
- châteaux
- cloze
- coze
- crows
- does
- dos
- doughs
- fallows
- fellows
- flows
- foes
- follows
- foredispose
- frows
- glows
- goes
- grows
- hard-nose
- hollows
- joes
Questions about prose
- What does prose mean?
- Prose means language, particularly written language, not intended as poetry.
- What is prose in Hindi?
- Prose in Hindi is गद्य (gadya). See Prose meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is prose?
- Prose can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce prose?
- Prose is pronounced /ˈpɹəʊz/ (UK).
- What is the plural of prose?
- The plural of prose is proses.
Words near prose in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: prose (page history and authors); Prose (page history and authors); prose (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); نثر (Punjabi) (page history and authors); prose (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); prose (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); गद्य (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); prose (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); نثر (Pashto) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-prose.ogg.
Cite this entry: “prose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/prose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.