prose
/prəʊz
/noun [mass noun]
1Written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure: a short story in prose [as modifier]: a prose passage...
- He points to the clear, simple prose of Ernest Hemingway and Samuel Beckett as examples of brilliant writing that is not bewildering for its complexity.
- So I think people who are trying to help students genuinely write better English prose are doing a noble service.
- To say that a man cannot write clear prose is not necessarily to blame him.
1.1 [count noun] A passage of prose for translation into a foreign language.
1.2Plain or dull writing, discourse, or expression: closely typed in best office prose...
- This morning I read it, and it is a lump of leaden prose, ungainly and unattractive, like a plain fat spotty teenager at her prom, dressed like a Christmas cake.
2 another term for sequence (sense 4 of the noun).
verb
1 [no object] Talk tediously: he was still prosing away about the advantages of a warm climate...
- He was prosing on again about rigging candidate selection, to the benefit of women and ethnic minorities.
- One lesson prosed that the apostle Paul survived the ship wreck at Malta because he had ‘eaten carrots and was strong.’
- ‘We were merely prosing about old times.’
2 [with object] dated Compose in or convert into prose.
Derivatives
proser
Origin
Middle English: via Old French from Latin prosa (oratio) 'straightforward (discourse'), feminine of prosus, earlier prorsus 'direct'.