troubadour

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: trou=ba=dour

CIDE DICTIONARY

troubadour, n. [F. troubadour, fr. Pr. trobador, (assumed) LL. tropator a singer, tropare to sing, fr. tropus a kind of singing, a melody, song, L. tropus a trope, a song, Gr. a turn, way, manner, particular mode in music, a trope. See Trope, and cf. Trouvre.].

 One of a school of poets who flourished from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, principally in Provence, in the south of France, and also in the north of Italy. They invented, and especially cultivated, a kind of lyrical poetry characterized by intricacy of meter and rhyme, and usually of a romantic, amatory strain.  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

troubadour, n.
1 any of a number of French medieval lyric poets composing and singing in Proven{ccedil}al in the 11th-13th c. on the theme of courtly love.
2 a singer or poet.

Etymology

F f. Prov. trobador f. trobar find, invent, compose in verse

THESAURUS

troubadour

Ahasuerus, Ancient Mariner, Argonaut, Flying Dutchman, Goliard, Meistersinger, Odysseus, Oisin, Ossian, Parnassian, Ulysses, arch-poet, ballad maker, ballad singer, balladeer, balladist, balladmonger, bard, beat poet, bird of passage, bucoliast, drifter, elegist, epic poet, fili, floater, folk singer, folk-rock singer, gad, gadabout, gleeman, go-about, idyllist, imagist, itinerant, jongleur, laureate, librettist, major poet, maker, minnesinger, minor poet, minstrel, modernist, mover, occasional poet, odist, pastoral poet, pastoralist, peregrinator, peregrine, peripatetic, poet, poet laureate, poetress, rambler, rhapsode, rhapsodist, rhymer, rhymester, roamer, rolling stone, rover, runabout, satirist, scop, serenader, skald, sonneteer, straggler, street singer, stroller, strolling minstrel, strolling player, symbolist, trouveur, trovatore, vers libriste, vers-librist, visitant, wait, wanderer, wandering minstrel, wandering scholar

ROGET THESAURUS

troubadour

Poetry

N poetry, poetics, poesy, Muse, Calliope, tuneful Nine, Parnassus, Helicon, Pierides, Pierian spring, versification, rhyming, making verses, prosody, orthometry, poem, epic, epic poem, epopee, epopoea, ode, epode, idyl, lyric, eclogue, pastoral, bucolic, dithyramb, anacreontic, sonnet, roundelay, rondeau, rondo, madrigal, canzonet, cento, monody, elegy, amoebaeum, ghazal, palinode, dramatic poetry, lyric poetry, opera, posy, anthology, disjecta membra poetae song, ballad, lay, love song, drinking song, war song, sea song, lullaby, music, nursery rhymes, doggerel, Hudibrastic verse, prose run mad, macaronics, macaronic verse, leonine verse, runes, canto, stanza, distich, verse, line, couplet, triplet, quatrain, strophe, antistrophe, verse, rhyme, assonance, crambo, meter, measure, foot, numbers, strain, rhythm, accentuation, dactyl, spondee, trochee, anapest, hexameter, pentameter, Alexandrine, anacrusis, antispast, blank verse, ictus, elegiacs, elegiac verse, elegaic meter, elegaic poetry, poet, poet laureate, laureate, bard, lyrist, scald, skald, troubadour, trouvere, minstrel, minnesinger, meistersinger, improvisatore, versifier, sonneteer, rhymer, rhymist, rhymester, ballad monger, runer, poetaster, genus irritabile vatum, poetic, poetical, lyric, lyrical, tuneful, epic, dithyrambic, metrical, a catalectin, elegiac, iambic, trochaic, anapestic, amoebaeic, Melibean, skaldic, Ionic, Sapphic, Alcaic, Pindaric, a poem round and perfect as a star, Dichtung und Wahrheit, furor poeticus, his virtues formed the magic of his song, I do but sing because I must, I learnt life from the poets, licentia vatum, mutum est pictura poema, O for a muse of fire!, sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge, the true poem is the poet's mind, Volk der Dichter und Denker, wisdom married to immortal verse.