sonnet Look up sonnet at Dictionary.com
1557 (in title of Surrey's poems), from Fr. sonnet (1543) or directly from It. sonetto, lit. "little song," from O.Prov. sonet "song," dim. of son "song, sound," from L. sonus "sound" (see sound (n.1)). Originally in Eng. also "any short lyric poem;" precise meaning is from It., where Petrarch (14c.) developed a scheme of an eight-line stanza (rhymed abba abba) followed by a six-line stanza (cdecde, the Italian sestet, or cdcdcd, the Sicilian sestet). Shakespeare developed the English Sonnet for his rhyme-poor native tongue: three Sicilian quatrains followed by a heroic couplet (ababcdcdefefgg).