Poem

How to spell poem

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce poem

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does poem mean?

1. nounA piece of writing arranged in lines, often using rhythm, rhyme, or imagery to express feeling or ideas.

Poem in a sentence

• She read a short poem aloud at the wedding reception.

• The teacher asked each student to memorise one poem for the assessment.

Where does poem come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek poiema, meaning literally 'a thing that has been made or created', which came from the verb poiein, 'to make' or 'to compose'. The Greeks thought of a poet as a maker, a craftsman of words, so a poem was simply the made object that resulted. Latin borrowed the term as poema, and from there it passed into French as poeme before reaching English in the mid-sixteenth century. The same poiein root gives us 'poet' and 'poetry', and it even hides inside 'onomatopoeia', the making of words from sounds. The spelling trap is the open run of vowels, oe, sitting where a single long vowel sound is heard, a reminder that the word once carried that Greek -ma ending for 'a thing made'.

How the word is built

• poe- (from Greek poiein: to make, create)
• -m (noun ending from -ma: a thing made)