From Middle English prose, from Old French prose, from Latin prōsa from the term prōsa ōrātiō ("a straightforward speech – i.e. without the ornaments of verse").

The term prōsa ("straightforward"), a colloquial form of prorsa ("straight forwards"), the feminine form prorsus ("straight forwards"), from itc-ola prōvorsus, from pro- ("forward") + vorsus ("turned"), form of vertō ("I turn").

• (RP) IPA: /ˈpɹəʊz/
• (America) IPA: /ˈpɹoʊz/

prose (uncountable)

1. Language, particularly written language, not intended as poetry.

   Though known mostly for her prose, she also produced a small body of excellent poems.

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost (1st ed)‎:

     ...Or if Sion Hill
     Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow’d
     Faft by the Oracle of God; I thence
     Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
     That with no middle flight intends to soar
     Above th’ Ionian Mounts while it pursues
     Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime...

2. Language which evinces little imagination or animation; dull and commonplace discourse.
   • 1888, Henry James, Partial Portraits‎, Macmillan:

     ...the vehicle is plodding prose, but the effect is none the less poignant. And in regard to this I may say that in a hundred places in Trollope the extremity of pathos is reached by the homeliest means.

3. (Roman Catholicism) A hymn with no regular meter, sometimes introduced into the Mass.
   • 1699, A new ecclesiastical history‎:

     Proses are parts of the Office of the Mass which are sung just before the Gospel, upon great Festivals. The French also call those Rhythmical Hymns Proses, which are sung in their Offices in the Church of Rome, in which Rhime only, and not Quantity of Syllables, is observed.

• poetry, verse

• prosaic
• prosody

• French: prose
• German: Prosa
• Italian: prosa
• Portuguese: prosa
• Russian: про́за
• Spanish: prosa

prose (proses, present participle prosing; simple past and past participle prosed)

1. To write or repeat in a dull, tedious, or prosy way.
   • 1819, John Keats, Otho the Great, act I, scene II, verses 189-190:

     Pray, do not prose, good Ethelbert, but speak;
     What is your purpose?

   • 1896, Robert Smythe Hichens, The Folly of Eustace‎:

     Already he felt himself near to being a celebrity. He had astonished Eton. That was a good beginning. Papa might prose, knowing, of course, nothing of the poetry of caricature, of the wild joys and the laurels that crown the whimsical. So while Mr. Lane hunted adjectives, and ran sad-sounding and damnatory substantives to earth, Eustace hugged himself, and secretly chuckled over his pilgrim's progress towards the pages of Vanity Fair.

Borrowed from German Pröse, from a short form of the personal name Ambrose.

1. Surname.