rondeau Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun a musical form that is often the last movement of a sonata
    rondo.
  2. noun a French verse form of 10 or 13 lines running on two rhymes; the opening phrase is repeated as the refrain of the second and third stanzas
    rondel.

WordNet

Ron*deau" noun
Etymology
F. See Roundel.
Definitions
  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. (Mus.) See Rondo,1.

Webster 1913