Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Ottava rima

Ottava rima

[Italian See Octave, and Rhyme.]

(Prosody) A stanza of eight lines of heroic verse, with three rhymes, the first six lines rhyming alternately and the last two forming a couplet. It was used by Byron in “Don Juan,” by Keats in “Isabella,” by Shelley in “The Witch of Atlas,” etc.