ballade

[ buh-lahd, ba-; French ba-lad ]

noun,plural bal·lades [buh-lahdz, ba-; French ba-lad]. /bəˈlɑdz, bæ-; French baˈlad/.
  1. a poem consisting commonly of three stanzas having an identical rhyme scheme, followed by an envoy, and having the same last line for each of the stanzas and the envoy.

  2. Music. a composition in free style and romantic mood, often for solo piano or for orchestra.

Origin of ballade

1
1485–95; <Middle French, variant of baladeballad

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use ballade in a sentence

  • “Ballades, Rondeaus, etc.” (collected by Gleeson White), xxiv.

  • Of the Ballades the first was termed more popular, the second finer and more earnest—though neither makes very much noise.

    Piano Mastery | Harriette Brower
  • The Ballades were taken up in these lessons, and the light thrown upon their poetical content was often a revelation.

    Piano Mastery | Harriette Brower
  • He began exchanging ballades with Philip, whom he apostrophises as his companion, his cousin, and his brother.

    Familiar Studies of Men and Books | Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Events had so fallen out while he was rhyming ballades, that he had become the type of all that was most truly patriotic.

    Familiar Studies of Men and Books | Robert Louis Stevenson

British Dictionary definitions for ballade

ballade

/ (bæˈlɑːd, French balad) /


noun
  1. prosody a verse form consisting of three stanzas and an envoy, all ending with the same line. The first three stanzas commonly have eight or ten lines each and the same rhyme scheme

  2. music an instrumental composition, esp for piano, based on or intended to evoke a narrative

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012