Standard Lemma guide

poetics

noun · 2 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.

  • CMU ARPABET: P OW0 EH1 T IH0 K S Digits mark lexical stress: 1 primary, 2 secondary, 0 unstressed.

1

noun

Meaning 1

The theory of poetry, or of literature in general.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Topics: human-sciences, literature, media, philosophy, publishing, sciences

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

2

noun

Meaning 2

study of poetic works

Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

Broader terms: literary study

Narrower terms: prosody, metrics

History

Etymology

From the Poetics of Aristotle.

Across languages

Translations

19 source translations are retained for this English entry.

  • Bulgarian: поетика (poetika) — the theory of poetry
  • Chinese Cantonese: 詩學 /诗学 (si1 hok6) — the theory of poetry
  • Chinese Mandarin: 詩學 /诗学 (shīxué) — the theory of poetry
  • Faroese: skaldskaparfrøði — the theory of poetry
  • Finnish: poetiikka — the theory of poetry
  • Finnish: runousoppi — the theory of poetry
  • French: poétique — the theory of poetry
  • German: Poetik — the theory of poetry
  • German: Dichtkunstlehre — the theory of poetry
  • Hungarian: poétika — the theory of poetry
  • Hungarian: költészettan — the theory of poetry
  • Kazakh: поэтика (poétika) — the theory of poetry
  • Macedonian: поетика (poetika) — the theory of poetry
  • Pannonian Rusyn: поетика (poetika) — the theory of poetry
  • Polish: poetyka — the theory of poetry
  • Russian: поэтика (poetika) — the theory of poetry
  • Serbo-Croatian: poetika — the theory of poetry
  • Swedish: poetik — the theory of poetry
  • Turkish: poetik — the theory of poetry
Real reading context

poetics in complete knowledge articles