RONDEAU

rondeau. Rondeau, [rondo] n. a kind of ancient poetry

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Ron‐deau″ (?), n. [[F. See Roundel.]] [Written also rondo.] 1. 1. A species of lyric poetry so composed as to contain a refrain or repetition which recurs according to a fixed law, and a limited number of rhymes recurring also by rule.
☞ When the rondeau was called the rondel it was mostly written in fourteen octosyllabic lines of two rhymes, as in the rondels of Charles d'Orleans. . . . In the 17th century the approved form of the rondeau was a structure of thirteen verses with a refrain. Encyc. Brit. 2. 2. (Mus.) See Rondo, 1.