rhyme royal

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

This term was reportedly first used in the mid-1800s.

Noun

rhyme royal (countable and uncountable, plural rhymes royal)

  1. (uncountable, poetry) A form of English verse consisting of seven-line stanzas of iambic pentameter having a rhyme scheme of ababbcc, first represented in English in works by Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400).
    • 1898, Henry Augustin Beers, 18th Century: A History of English Romanticism, ch. 10:
      Perhaps the most engaging of the Rowley poems are "An Excelente Balade of Charitie," written in the rhyme royal; and "The Bristowe Tragedie," in the common ballad stanza.
  2. (countable, poetry) A single stanza of this form.
    • 1938, H. S. V. Jones, "Brief Mention," The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 37, no. 1 (Jan.), p. 126:
      Chaucer for years before the Prologue to LGW had been writing heroic couplets at the close of each of his rhymes royal.

References
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