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Glite Dictionary
🏔️ A tall mountain ✍️ A 14-syllable line
fourteener

fourteener

9.1
A line of poetry with fourteen syllables often used in ballads
  • noun
  • /fɔrˈtinər/
  • Literature
translation icon : catorceno
  • The fourteener flowed beautifully in the recital.

Examples

  • In his latest collection, he included a fourteener that flows rhythmically and speaks to the heart.

  • The poet crafted a beautiful fourteener that captured the essence of love and loss.

  • The poet experimented with a fourteener to give his ballad a unique rhythm.

  • Many traditional English ballads are written in the fourteener form, making them easy to sing.

  • She counted each syllable carefully to ensure her line was a perfect fourteener.

  • A fourteener is a line of verse.

  • Students often study fourteeners to understand the structure of longer poetic forms.

Surface Forms

fourteener singular
fourteeners plural

Morphology

fourteener = fourteen (semi-transparent) = fourteen + er

Formed from 'fourteen' + '-er' which is transparent morphologically, but the specialized metrical meaning (a line of verse with fourteen syllables) is a literary term that may not be obvious to an average learner.

Etymology

Fourteener for a line of verse comes from fourteen ('14') plus the ending -er, so it means 'one that has fourteen'. In poetry a fourteener is a line of fourteen syllables, so the name tells you exactly how long the line is.