sonnet

noun

son·​net ˈsä-nət 

: a fixed verse form of Italian origin consisting of 14 lines that are typically 5-foot iambics rhyming according to a prescribed scheme

also : a poem in this pattern

Examples of sonnet in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

People can and should be skeptical about the sonnets written about starting NFL quarterbacks every offseason, when no one is getting sacked and almost everyone looks good. — Scott Fowler, Charlotte Observer, 30 July 2026

The conventions ground the writing as meter and rhyme steady a sonnet. — Literary Hub, 13 July 2026

Tech was even still cool in late 2022 when OpenAI released ChatGPT and everyone started giddily re-doing Taylor Swift lyrics as Shakespearean sonnets. — Steven Zeitchik, HollywoodReporter, 25 June 2026

Performance That Relies On Deep Institutional Reasoning Frontier models are extraordinary at problems that are truly novel, ambiguous and wide—writing sonnets, solving math olympiad problems, debugging Python code. — Anshul Gupta, Forbes.com, 18 June 2026

Word History

Etymology

Italian sonetto, from Old Occitan sonet little song, from son sound, song, from Latin sonus sound

First Known Use

circa 1555, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing sonnet

• English sonnet
• Italian sonnet
• Petrarchan sonnet
• Shakespearean sonnet
• sonnet sequence

Rhymes for sonnet

• propionate

Kids Definition

sonnet

noun

son·​net ˈsän-ət 

: a poem of 14 lines usually rhyming by a fixed scheme