Quick Facts
- French:
- “repeated series of words or phrases”
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kyrielle
prosody
kyrielle, a French verse form in short, usually octosyllabic, rhyming couplets. The couplets are often paired in quatrains and are characterized by a refrain that is sometimes a single word and sometimes the full second line of the couplet or the full fourth line of the quatrain.
The word is from the Old French kiriele, which is a derivative of the word kyrie, a type of Christian liturgical prayer.
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