Forms: α. 4–5 versifiour, 5 -fyowre; 5 versefiour, -fyour. β. 5 versyfyer, -fyar, 6 vercyfyer, 5 vercifier, 5– versifier, 6 -fiar, 6, 8 -fyer; 5 versefier, 5–6 -fyer. [a. AF. versifiur (13th c.), versifiour, OF. versefiere, -fierre (13th c.), versifieur (14th c.), f. versifier: see VERSIFY v. and -ER.]
1. One who versifies or composes verses; a verser or verse-maker; a poet.
α. c. 1340. Richard Rolle of Hampole, Prick of Conscience, 897. He suld fynd ful litel matere To mak ioy whilles he here duelles, Als a versifiour in metre þus telles.
1382. Wyclif, Job, Pref. The whiche thing versifioures more than a symple redere vnderstonden.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVII. xci. (Bodl. MS.). It is seide þt versifiours likned þe lelye to mannes inwitte.
a. 1425. trans. Arderne’s Treat. Fistula, etc., 4. Wherfore seiþ a versifiour,… ‘lat werke ouercome thi worde, for boste lesseneþ gode lose.’
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 508/2. Versifyowre (H. versyowre), versificator.
β. 14[?]. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 681. Hic versificator, a versyfyer.
a. 1450. Mankind, 746, in Macro Plays, 27. As a nobyll versyfyer makyth mencyon in þis verse.
1477. Earl Rivers (Caxton), Dictes, 13. Omer was an auncient vercifier in Grece.
a. 1513. Fabyan, Chron., VII. 405. Of this noble prynce a vercyfyer made these .ii. verses folowynge.
1567. Drant, Horace, Ep., II. ii. H iv. Euil versefyers mocked be, yet haue they to theire ioy.
1603. Daniel, Def. Rhime, Wks. (1717), 32. This Self-Love, whereunto we Versifiers are ever noted to be especially subject.
1670. Milton, Hist. Eng., V. Wks. 1851, V. 227. Other pretious things,… describ’d in Malmsbury, tak’n … out of an old versifier, some of whose verses he recites.
1741. Watts, Improv. Mind, I. xvi. § 1. More elevated language than the fondest critics have ever found in any of the Heathen versifiers either of Greece or Rome.
1789. Belsham, Ess., I. xii. 232. Pope has often been stiled the best versifier in the English language.
1828. Harrovian, 46. He was a good classic, and an excellent versifier.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, x. 333. Those purely rustic poems which have … been imitated by versifiers emulous of his gracefulness.
2. With depreciative force: A mere or poor writer of verse(s); a rhymester, a poetaster.
1531. Elyot, Gov., I. xiii. Semblably they that make verses, expressynge therby none other lernynge but the craft of versifyeng, be … of auncient writers … onely called versifyers.
1581. Sidney, Apol. Poetrie (Arb.), 28. Now swarme many versifiers that neede neuer aunswere to the name of Poets.
1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie, I. i. (Arb.), 19. The translator, who … may well be sayd a versifier, but not a Poet.
1642. Milton, Apol. Smect., Wks. 1851, III. 262. Rather nice and humerous in what was tolerable, then patient to read every drawling versifier.
1652–62. Heylyn, Cosmogr., IV. (1682), 85. Philip whom the Versifier (I do not say the Poet) called Philippus Hispanus.
1696. Phillips (ed. 5), Versifier, a maker of Verses, generally taken in an ill sense.
1781. Sir J. Reynolds, Journ. Flanders, Wks. 1797, II. 112. The modern versifiers,… carrying no weight of thought, easily fall into that false gallop of verse.
1821. Byron, Diary, Wks. (1846), 531/2. As different from an orator as an improvisatore or a versifier from a poet.
1880. Miss Braddon, Just as I am, xi. She thought Byron an ephemeral versifier.
