tercet means a three-line stanza in a poem. It carries an Arena rating of 1507, earned across 8 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, tercet ranks #52 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #3,621 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words, #6,728 of 17,163 for Funniest Words, #8,423 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words.
tercet is pronounced /ˈtɜː(ɹ)sɪt/.
Why “tercet” is a great word
A three-line stanza or unit of verse, often forming part of a larger formal structure like the sestet of an Italian sonnet. From Italian terzetto, diminutive of terzo (“third”), from Latin tertius (“third”), from the root of tres (“three”); also from French tercet, first attested in English in the 1590s. Unlike a couplet, which binds two lines into a closed pair, or a quatrain, which builds a roomier, four-line frame, the tercet offers a more unstable, onward-leaning unit of thought. It is the triangular brace of Dante’s terza rima, the three crows on a wire, and the three beats of a waltz dying into silence—a small shape where closure is withheld, the moment suspended between beginning and end.
noun
- a three-line stanza in a poem
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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