decasyllabic

[ dek-uh-si-lab-ik ]

adjective

1. having ten syllables:

   a decasyllabic verse.

Other Words From

• nondec·a·syl·labic adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of decasyllabic¹

1765–75; deca- + syllabic; compare French décasyllabique

Example Sentences

Originally I wrote this internal narrative as a new Canterbury tale, complete with a prologue in decasyllabic couplets, imagining Chaucer writing it all up after the fact, but I ended up with the simpler solution of embedding it as a letter that tells the crucial backstory.

From Slate

The style of the work was entirely novel; and the stanza in which it was written—the decasyllabic quatrain with alternate rhymes—had never been so effectively handled.

From Project Gutenberg

Sonnet, son′et, n. a poem in a stanza mostly iambic in movement, properly decasyllabic or hendecasyllabic in metre, always in fourteen lines—originally composed of an octave and a sestet—properly expressing two successive phases of one thought.—v.t. and v.i. to celebrate in sonnets.—adj.

From Project Gutenberg

Ron′del, a form of French verse, earlier than the rondeau, consisting of thirteen octosyllabic or decasyllabic lines on two rhymes—practised by Charles of Orleans, &c.;

From Project Gutenberg

The middle division of each contains ten decasyllabic lines.

From Project Gutenberg