dis·tich

(dĭs′tĭk)

n. pl. dis·tichs

1. A unit of verse consisting of two lines, especially as used in Greek and Latin elegiac poetry.

2. A rhyming couplet.

[Latin distichon, from Greek distikhon, from neuter of distikhos, having two rows or verses : di-, two; see di-¹ + stikhos, line of verse; see steigh- in Indo-European roots.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

distich

(ˈdɪstɪk)

(Poetry) prosody a unit of two verse lines, usually a couplet

[C16: from Greek distikhos having two lines, from di-¹ + stikhos stich]

ˈdistichal adj

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

dis•tich

(ˈdɪs tɪk)

n.

1. a unit of two lines of verse, usu. a self-contained statement; couplet.

2. a rhyming couplet.

[1545–55; < Latin distichon; see di-¹, -stichous]

dis′ti•chal, adj.

distich

a couplet or pair of verses or lines, usually read as a unit.

distich

[ˈdɪstɪk] N → dístico m

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

"Do you know that he made this distich against the Jesuits?"

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Was it worth while, in short, noble Porthos, to heap so much gold, and not have even the distich of a poor poet engraven upon thy monument?

View in context

Such rarae aves should be remitted to the epitaph writer, or to some poet who may condescend to hitch him in a distich, or to slide him into a rhime with an air of carelessness and neglect, without giving any offence to the reader.

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Your stool limps like one of Martial's distiches; it has one hexameter leg and one pentameter leg."

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Volume I contains an introduction, a detailed discussion of the relevant East Frankish manuscripts, a clarification of editorial principles, and the edition itself, including the dedication and distich. Volume II provides a 212-page commentary, as well as a list of virtually all the vocabulary used in the edition, an extensive bibliography, and a series of indexes.

A SCHOLARLY EDITION OF THE LIBER YMNORUM

In its distich stanzas, the first line ends with the word "forest" every time, and the second rhymes internally.

Edward Thomas Lighting Out for the Territory

A poem in which the second line of each distich rhymes with the same letter.

Imran Khan to Sufi Imran Khan

Wesling put a lifetime of effort into trying to overcome this theoretical and practical limitation in poetic criticism (e.g., Chances, New Poetries, and Scissors), but like Vendler's theory of "inner form," what he arrived at in the end, his theory of "grammetrics," the "scissoring" of levels of syntax (word, phrase, clause, etc.) by levels of poetic form (half-line, line, distich, stanza, etc.), which, as he claimed, can indeed produce effects of continuity/discontinuity, irregularity/regularity, hierarchy/equivalence, unexpectedness/expectedness, coherence/incoherence, is also partial and scattered.

Rhythm, temporality, and "inner form"

While Mildred Budny has argued, in a careful analysis of the manuscript, that although Dunstan was not the original artist, he did embellish the distich and the drawing, probably retouching it with ink, Michelle Brown regards this image as having been drawn by Dunstan himself.

Matthew Paris's 'self-portrait with the Virgin Mary' in the Historia Anglorum

In reality they are sung in a different way: in distich, with a musical structure that stops at the end of the second line.

The tammorra displaced: music and body politics from churchyards to glocal arenas in the Neapolitan area

This distich, known by all, expresses the sorrow brought on by reminiscence, which acts as a reminder of temporal and spatial separation.

Songs and sorrow in Tanjung Bunga: music and the myth of the origin of rice