Definition of "rondeau" []

• A lyrical poem of French origin having 13 or sometimes 10 lines with two rhymes throughout and with the opening phrase repeated twice as a refrain. (noun)
• A medieval French song, either monophonic, as in the songs of the trouvères, or polyphonic in construction. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The next morning I sat down at my computer and in two hours turned a decades-old dead-in-the-water villanelle into a working rondeau."
• "In addition to the virelai there are, among other things, examples of rondeau, ballade, romance and free song-forms."
• "His surviving works include 28 mass movements, 32 psalms, motets, and small sacred works, and 54 chansons, 47 in rondeau form and seven in ballade form."