From Italian sonetto 'little sound,' diminutive of suono, invented by Giacomo da Lentini at the Sicilian court around 1235.
A fourteen-line poem with a fixed rhyme scheme and meter, typically in iambic pentameter.
From Italian sonetto, diminutive of suono 'a sound,' from Latin sonus 'sound.' The sonnet is literally a 'little sound' or 'little song.' Giacomo da Lentini invented the form at the Sicilian court of Emperor Frederick II around 1235. Petrarch perfected it, and Sir Thomas Wyatt brought it to England in the 1530s. Key roots: *swenh₂- (Proto-Indo-European: "to sound, resound").