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PROSE
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Ordinary writing as distinguished from verse
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("prose" is a kind of...):
genre; literary genre; writing style (a style of expressing yourself in writing)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "prose"):
euphuism (an elegant style of prose of the Elizabethan period; characterized by balance and antithesis and alliteration and extended similes with and allusions to nature and mythology)
nonfiction; nonfictional prose (prose writing that is not fictional)
interior monologue (a literary genre that presents a fictional character's sequence of thoughts in the form of a monologue)
stream of consciousness (a literary genre that reveals a character's thoughts and feeling as they develop by means of a long soliloquy)
prose poem (prose that resembles poetry)
polyphonic prose (a rhythmical prose employing the poetic devices of alliteration and assonance)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Matter of fact, commonplace, or dull expression
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("prose" is a kind of...):
expressive style; style (a way of expressing something (in language or art or music etc.) that is characteristic of a particular person or group of people or period)
Derivation:
prosaic (not challenging; dull and lacking excitement)
prosaic (lacking wit or imagination)
prosaic (not fanciful or imaginative)
Context examples:
She compared Tennyson, and Browning, and her favorite prose masters with him, and to his hopeless discredit.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Here are seven of you, besides myself, (who, she is pleased to say, am very entertaining already,) and she only demands from each of you either one thing very clever, be it prose or verse, original or repeated—or two things moderately clever—or three things very dull indeed, and she engages to laugh heartily at them all.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
