[pan-toom] 
| a Malay verse form consisting of an indefinite number of quatrains with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain repeated as the first and third lines of the following one. |
| pan·toum (pān-tōōm') n. A verse form composed of quatrains in which the second and fourth lines are repeated as the first and third lines of the following quatrain. [French, from Malay pantun, verse composed using metonymy.] |
pantoum
a Malaysian poetic form in French and English. The pantoum consists of a series of quatrains rhyming abab in which the second and fourth lines of a quatrain recur as the first and third lines in the succeeding quatrain; each quatrain introduces a new second rhyme (as bcbc, cdcd). The first line of the series recurs as the last line of the closing quatrain, and in some English examples the third line of the poem recurs as the second line of the closing quatrain, rhyming xaxa.
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