Other forms: stanzas
A stanza is the formal name for one block of lines in a poem. A four-line stanza, the opening stanza, stanza breaks.
Verse is the loose word and stanza the exact one, and a stanza usually keeps a fixed pattern of length and rhyme through the poem. The Italian means a stopping place or a room, which is what a stanza is — a room the reader pauses in.
1nounstanzaOne block of lines in a poem.
“Everyone knew the first stanza of the poem by heart, but nobody could recite the second.”
stanza is a part of a poem.
Also accepted in games: verse
Italian stanza means a room or stopping place, from Latin stare, to stand. A stanza is a place the poem pauses.
Proto-Indo-European
*sth₂éh₁yeti
Proto-Italic
*staēō
Latin
stans
Vulgar Latin
*stantia — standing, stopping-place
Italian
stanza
English, today
stanza
From Italian stanza, from Vulgar Latin stantia (“standing, stopping-place”), from Latin stans, from sto, from Proto-Italic staēō, from Proto-Indo-European sth₂éh₁yeti, stative verb from steh₂- (whence English stand). a doublet of stance.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA