,noun, adjective, verb, versed, vers⋅ing.| 1. | (not in technical use) a stanza. |
| 2. | a succession of metrical feet written, printed, or orally composed as one line; one of the lines of a poem. |
| 3. | a particular type of metrical line: a hexameter verse. |
| 4. | a poem, or piece of poetry. |
| 5. | metrical composition; poetry, esp. as involving metrical form. |
| 6. | metrical writing distinguished from poetry because of its inferior quality: a writer of verse, not poetry. |
| 7. | a particular type of metrical composition: elegiac verse. |
| 8. | the collective poetry of an author, period, nation, etc.: Miltonian verse; American verse. |
| 9. | one of the short conventional divisions of a chapter of the Bible. |
| 10. | Music.
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| 11. | Rare. a line of prose, esp. a sentence, or part of a sentence, written as one line. |
| 12. | Rare. a subdivision in any literary work. |
| 13. | of, pertaining to, or written in verse: a verse play. |
| 14. | versify. |
| 15. | to express in verse. |

A kind of language made intentionally different from ordinary speech or prose. It usually employs devices such as meter and rhyme, though not always. Free verse, for example, has neither meter nor rhyme. Verse is usually considered a broader category than poetry, with the latter being reserved to mean verse that is serious and genuinely artistic.