In poetry, a refrain is a word, line or phrase that is repeated within the lines or stanzas of the poem itself.

The tradition of repeating refrains in lyric poetry has continued into the present day through popular music—most genres of songs with lyrics contain choruses with lyrics that repeat, making those choruses a form of refrain. A chorus, in other words, is just a specialized kind of refrain.

As nouns the difference between stanza and refrain is that stanza is a unit of a poem, written or printed as a paragraph; equivalent to a verse while refrain is the chorus or burden of a song repeated at the end of each verse or stanza.

The definition of a refrain is the part of a song or poem that is repeated. An example of refrain is the part “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” in Peter Paul and Mary’s 1960’s folk song “Blowing in the Wind.”

In music, a refrain has two parts: the lyrics of the song, and the melody. Sometimes refrains vary their words slightly when repeated; recognizability is given to the refrain by the fact that it is always sung to the same tune, and the rhymes, if present, are preserved despite the variations of the words.

Refrain is a type of repetition, but it is somewhat different from repetition. Refrain is repetition of usually a line, a phrase, two or three lines, or even words in a poem. Repetition, on the other hand, involves repetition of words, phrases, syllables, or even sounds in a full piece.

A quatrain is any four-line stanza or poem. There are 15 possible rhyme sequences for a four-line poem; common rhyme schemes for these include AAAA, AABB, ABAB, ABBA, and ABCB.

Poets use refrains, or repeated lines, most often placed at the end of a stanza, to reinforce the main theme or point of a poem. The refrains, because they were repeated over and over, became easier for listeners to remember. This tradition has persisted to the present day.

Acrostic Definition 1 Acrostic Pronunciation 2 Types of Acrostic Poems. In the most common type of acrostic poems, the initial letter of each line forms a word. 3 Decoding Acrostics. 4 Acrostics vs. 5 Acrostics Through History.

Refrain is a verse, a line, a set, or a group of lines that appears at the end of stanza, or appears where a poem divides into different sections. It originated in France, where it is popular as, refraindre, which means “to repeat.”. Refrain is a poetic device that repeats, at regular intervals, in different stanzas.

An acrostic is a piece of writing in which a particular set of letters—typically the first letter of each line, word, or paragraph—spells out a word or phrase with special significance to the text.

Another difference is that a refrain in a poem may appear at the end of a stanza; however, this recurrence of words and phrases in repetition may occur in any line of stanza. Villanelle, on the contrary, is a poetic form consisting of nineteen lines that uses refrain in its first and third lines.