Definition:
Ordinary writing (both fiction and nonfiction) as distinguished from verse.
Etymology:
From the Latin, "forward" + "turn"Observations:
- "I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry: that is, prose = words in their best order;--poetry = the best words in the best order."
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk, July 12, 1827) - Philosophy Teacher: All that is not prose is verse; and all that is not verse is prose.
M. Jourdain: What? When I say: "Nicole, bring me my slippers, and give me my night-cap," is that prose?
Philosophy Teacher: Yes, sir.
M. Jourdain: Good heavens! For more than 40 years I have been speaking prose without knowing it.
(Molière, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, 1671) - "[O]ne can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a window pane."
(George Orwell, "Why I Write," 1946) - "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love
will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer."
(E.M. Forster, Howards End, 1910) - "For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty."
(John Cheever, on accepting the National Medal for Literature, 1982) - "Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it."
(Jeremy Bentham) - "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose."
(Governor Mario Cuomo, New Republic, April 8, 1985)
Pronunciation: PROZ
