blank verse Unrhymed verse, especially iambic pentameter or unrhymed heroic couplets, widely used in English dramatic and epic poetry. Henry Howard introduced blank verse into England in the 16th century with his translation of Virgil's Aeneid. Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare transformed it into the characteristic medium of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. John Milton employed it in Paradise Lost (1667) and William Wordsworth used it in his long autobiography The Prelude (1850). It continues to be popular as a form and technical device in contemporary poetry.

blank verse • n. verse without rhyme, esp. that which uses iambic pentameter.

blank verse verse without rhyme, especially the iambic pentameter of unrhymed heroic, the regular measure of English dramatic and epic poetry.