the.com/prose
the way humans talk when they've given up on rhyming
means Ordinary written or spoken language that runs in plain sentences and paragraphs, without the deliberate rhythm or line-breaks of poetry.
from From Latin 'prosa,' short for 'prosa oratio' — meaning 'straightforward speech.' That 'prosa' is a worn-down form of 'prorsus,' meaning 'direct' or 'going straight ahead' (literally 'turned forward'). So the very word draws a contrast: poetry 'turns' at the end of each line — the Latin 'versus' means a turning, like a plow at the end of a furrow — while prose just keeps walking straight on. It reached English through Old French 'prose.'
- name origin
- From Latin prosa, meaning straightforward
- poetry's twin
- Defined mostly by not being poetry
- prose poems
- A genre that breaks its own rules
- purple prose
- Writing so overwrought it earns an insult color
- default mode
- Nearly all books, laws, and texts use it
james joyce's ulysses — 1922 novel with stream-of-consciousness prose following leopold bloom through dublin in 18 episodes
virginia woolf's mrs dalloway — 1925 modernist prose novel depicting a single day in london through interior monologue