verse
/vɝːs/noun, verb
A line or stanza of metrical writing
From Latin vers- (turn).
Lineage
The story
Picture a Roman plowman reaching the end of a furrow and turning back to begin the next one: Latin versus originally meant a row or furrow, then a line of writing or poetry. The same image explains why a poem’s lines were imagined as a sequence of turns across a page. English inherited the word through Old French and Anglo-French, while religious singers used a verse as a line delivered by a leader and answered by a choir. The Geneva Bible of the 1550s was the first English New Testament to divide its chapters fully into numbered verses, turning poetry’s “lines” into a system for locating scripture. By 1918, “verse” had also settled into popular-song structure: a solo section moving between repeated choruses—a small literary furrow plowed through the music.
Modern usage
To compete against someone, especially in a two-player video game
- Heard in
- gaming · rap and hip-hop
- See
- Urban Dictionary entries for “verse” as a gaming verb and as a few lines of a rap or song