Leonine verse

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a kind of verse, in which the end of the line rhymes with the middle; - so named from Leo, or Leoninus, a Benedictine and canon of Paris in the twelfth century, who wrote largely in this measure, though he was not the inventor. The following line is an example:

See also: Leonine

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by G. & C. Merriam Co.

References in classic literature

Leonine verses are those in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end, as in this famous passage from Bella Peeler Silcox:

Leonine verses are so called in honor of a poet named Leo, whom prosodists appear to find a pleasure in believing to have been the first to discover that a rhyming couplet could be run into a single line.

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