Definition
1. poems
2. someone or something of great beauty, emotion, or imagination, or the quality of beauty, emotion, or imagination
View the full definition in the Macmillan Dictionary.
Origin and usage
Poetry is derived from the French ‘poetrie’ and the Latin ‘poetria’. It was first used in English in the late 14th century.
Examples
Today is World Poetry Day, so here in place of the usual post is a poem about spring, by Thomas Nashe, a contemporary of William Shakespeare’s:
Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo!
Spring, the sweet spring!
Quotations
“Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.”
(Thomas Hardy)
Related words
metre, rhyme, scan, verse
Browse related words in the Macmillan Thesaurus.
