villanelle
/vɪləˈnɛl/noun
villanelle is a noun meaning “A type of poem, consisting of five tercets and one quatrain, with only two rhymes” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-I-L-L-A-N-E-L-L-E, and it appears about once in every 19 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of villanelle is villanelles.
What does villanelle mean?
noun
- 1
A type of poem, consisting of five tercets and one quatrain, with only two rhymes.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce villanelle?
- /vɪləˈnɛl/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-villanelle.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of villanelle
- villanelles plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is villanelle?
Villanelle appears about once in every 19 million words in written English, the 133,440th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does villanelle come from?
From the French villanelle, from Italian villanella, from villano (“peasant”), from Latin vīllānus (“farmhand”), from vīlla (“estate”). The origin references the pastoral themes originally associated with this form.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).