Word.ws English Dictionary

sonnet

/ˈsɒnɪt/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

obsolete/ˈsʌnɪt/

sonnet noun: a fixed verse form of Italian origin consisting of fourteen lines that are typically five-foot iambics and rhyme according to one of a few prescribed schemes.

sonnet: a fixed verse form of Italian origin consisting of fourteen lines that are typically five-foot...
Image: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sonnet (plural sonnets)

  1. A fixed verse form of Italian origin consisting of fourteen lines that are typically five-foot iambics and rhyme according to one of a few prescribed schemes.

Verb

sonnet (third-person singular simple present sonnets, present participle sonneting or sonnetting, simple past and past participle sonneted or sonnetted)

  1. (intransitive) To compose sonnets.
    • strains that come almost to sonneting1649, J[ohn] Milton, ΕΙΚΟΝΟΚΛΆΣΤΗΣ [Eikonoklástēs] […], London: […] Matthew Simmons, […], →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To celebrate in sonnets; to write a sonnet about.

sonnet meaning in Bengali, Malayalam, Tagalog and Arabic

sonnet in Bengali

sonnet
চতুর্দশপদী কবিতা côturdôśpôdī kôbita

sonnet in Malayalam

verse form consisting of fourteen lines
ഗീതകം gītakaṁ

sonnet in Tagalog

verse form consisting of fourteen lines
soneto, dalitlit

sonnet in Arabic

verse form consisting of fourteen lines
سونيت
More languagesFewer languages
sonnet in Persian
متن ادبی matn-e adabi
sonnet in Thai
ซอนเน็ต

Examples of sonnet in a sentence

  • Shakespeare often used volte-faces in the rhyming couplets at the end of his sonnets.
  • The editor decided that repunctuating Shakespeare's sonnets risked damaging their meaning.
  • Does this volume of Shakespeare include his sonnets?

All 11 example sentences with sonnet

Forms of sonnet

Noun
pluralsonnets
Verb
third-person singular presentsonnets
present participlesonneting
present participlesonnetting
past participlesonneted
pastsonneted
past participlesonnetted
pastsonnetted

Plural of sonnet: sonnets

Origin of sonnet

Borrowed from Middle French sonnet, from Italian sonetto, from Old Occitan sonet (“a song”), diminutive of son (“song, sound”), from Latin sonus (“sound”).

Words formed from sonnet

Words that rhyme with sonnet

Questions about sonnet

What does sonnet mean?
Sonnet means a fixed verse form of Italian origin consisting of fourteen lines that are typically five-foot iambics and rhyme according to one of a few prescribed schemes.
What is sonnet in Bengali?
Sonnet in Bengali is চতুর্দশপদী কবিতা (côturdôśpôdī kôbita). See Sonnet meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is sonnet?
Sonnet can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sonnet?
Sonnet is pronounced /ˈsɒnɪt/.
What is the plural of sonnet?
The plural of sonnet is sonnets.

Words near sonnet in the dictionary

  1. Sonner
  2. sonneratiaceous
  3. Sonners
  4. sonnes
  5. sonness
  6. sonnet
  7. sonnetary
  8. sonneted
  9. sonneteer
  10. sonneteered
  11. sonneteeress

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sonnet (page history and authors); চতুর্দশপদী কবিতা (Bengali) (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-sonnet.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sonnet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sonnet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.