Entertainment / Literature / Refrain: A line or set of lines at the end of a stanza or section of a longer poem or song--these lines repeat at regular intervals in other stanzas or sections of the same work. Sometimes the repetition involves minor changes in wording. A refrain might consist of a nonsense word (such as Shakespeare's 'With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino' in the song from As You Like It), a single word (such as 'Nevermore' in Poe's 'The Raven'), or even an entire separate stanza that is repeated alternating with each stanza in the poem. If the refrain is meant to be sung by all the auditors listening, such as in Burns' 'Auld Lang Syne,' the refrain is often called a chorus. The device is ancient. Examples are found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Bible, Greek, Latin, and Proven???§al verse, and in many, many ballads.
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Refrain Noun Synonyms: stop, cease, give up, discontinue, desist, quit, leave off, renounce
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Entertainment / Literature / Ballade: A French verse form consisting most often of three eight-line stanzas having the same rhyme pattern, followed by a four-line envoy. In a typical ballade, the last lines of each stanza and of the envoy MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Roundelay: A term used as a generic label for fixed forms of poetry using limited rhymes--such as the rondeau, rondel, and roundel. The word roundelay can be used in reference to the musical background (setting) MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Villanelle: A genre of poetry consisting of nineteen lines--five tercets and a concluding quatrain. The form requires that whole lines be repeated in a specific order, and that only two rhyming sounds occur in th MORE