Word.ws English Dictionary

Spenserian stanza

Spenserian stanza noun: a strophe of eight decasyllabic lines and an alexandrine, having three rhymes: the first and third; the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh; and the sixth, eighth, and ninth (ABABBCBCC).

Noun

Spenserian stanza (plural Spenserian stanzas)

  1. A strophe of eight decasyllabic lines and an alexandrine, having three rhymes: the first and third; the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh; and the sixth, eighth, and ninth (ABABBCBCC).

Forms of Spenserian stanza

pluralSpenserian stanzas

Origin of Spenserian stanza

Invented by English poet Edmund Spenser (1552/53–1599) for his epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590–96).

Questions about Spenserian stanza

What does Spenserian stanza mean?
Spenserian stanza means a strophe of eight decasyllabic lines and an alexandrine, having three rhymes: the first and third; the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh; and the sixth, eighth, and ninth (ABABBCBCC).
What part of speech is Spenserian stanza?
Spenserian stanza is a noun.
What is the plural of Spenserian stanza?
The plural of Spenserian stanza is Spenserian stanzas.

Words near Spenserian stanza in the dictionary

  1. spense
  2. Spenser
  3. Spenserian
  4. Spenserian sonnet
  5. Spenserian sonnets
  6. Spenserian stanza
  7. Spenserian stanzas
  8. Spenseriana
  9. Spenserianism
  10. Spenserians
  11. Spenserism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Spenserian stanza (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.

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