How to use couplet in a sentence

10 example sentences · noun

Couplet means a pair of lines, typically with rhyming end words. Example: “Shakespeare often used volte-faces in the rhyming couplets at the end of his sonnets.”

Examples of couplet by meaning

nounA pair of one-way streets which carry opposing directions of traffic through gridded urban areas.

5th Street is one-way west only and 6th Street is one-way east only. Together, they form a couplet in Downtown Los Angeles.

nounA pair of two mutually exclusive choices in a dichotomous key.

The dichotomous keys are constructed so that each couplet presents a set of alternative choices.2001, Stephen T. Ross, The Inland Fishes of Mississippi, page 33
As long as the correct statement of each couplet is chosen, and the unknown organism is included in the key, a confident identification is usually achieved.2004, Shin'ichiro Ishikawa, An Exploration of a New Poetic Expression Beyond Dichotomy

More sentences with couplet

Shakespeare often used volte-faces in the rhyming couplets at the end of his sonnets.From the entry volte-face
Soon after Surrey's translation of Virgil, blank verse became a persuasive rival to the heroic couplet.2006, Philip Hobsbaum, “The heroic couplet”, in Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form, Routledge, →ISBN, page 18. From the entry blank verse
The danger for the couplet, a short endlessly recurrent metre, is an effect of sameishness.1958, Geoffrey Tillotson, Pope and human nature. From the entry sameishness
The sonnets' most flagrant fault lies in the bathoses into which their final couplets fall.1911, The Edinburgh Review: Or Critical Journal, volume 213, page 13. From the entry bathoses
He'd stand at the board making jokes the kids didn't understand, improvising fey little couplets of dactylic verse.2009, Robert Cohen, Amateur Barbarians, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 16. From the entry fey
Chaucer for years before the Prologue to LGW had been writing heroic couplets at the close of each of his rhymes royal.1938 Jan, H. S. V. Jones, “Brief Mention”, in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, volume 37, number 1, page 126. From the entry rhyme royal
Robert Lowell, first announcing flatly that Racine is untranslatable, puts his Alexandrines into speakable, nontinkling English couplets, a great feat and one that goes far to contradict his own statement.1961 August, Phoebe Lou Adams, “Potpourri”, in The Atlantic. From the entry pseudo-colloquial

Meaning of couplet

noun A pair of lines, typically with rhyming end words.
noun A pair of one-way streets which carry opposing directions of traffic through gridded urban areas.
noun A pair of two mutually exclusive choices in a dichotomous key.

Full definition of couplet

Questions about couplet in a sentence

How do you use couplet in a sentence?: Couplet is used as a noun. For example: “Shakespeare often used volte-faces in the rhyming couplets at the end of his sonnets.”
What is a short sentence with couplet?: “Shakespeare often used volte-faces in the rhyming couplets at the end of his sonnets.”
What does couplet mean?: Couplet means a pair of lines, typically with rhyming end words.

Adapted from Wiktionary: couplet (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use couplet in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/couplet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.