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COUPLET: Two lines--the second line immediately following the first--of the same metrical length that end in a rhyme to form a complete unit. Geoffrey Chaucer and other writers helped popularize the form in English poetry in the fourteenth century. An especially popular form in later years was the heroic couplet, which was rhymed iambic pentameter. It was popular from the 1600s through the late 1700s. Much Romantic poetry in the early 1800s used the couplet as well. A couplet that occurs after the volta in an English sonnet is called a gemel.