as in poets
a person who writes poetry
a bard best known for a series of love poems to his raven-haired beloved
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Recent Examples of bards
But this award, which was inaugurated in 2023 with a Jesso win, circles the same handful of writers, and country scribes like Jessie Jo Dillon, pop bards like Amy Allen, and reggaeton men-at-arms like Edgar Barrera are just as up next.
—
Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 30 Jan. 2026
But there’s nothing slack, or lazy, or subjective, or self-indulgent, about the elaborate verse-craft of those bards.
—Literary Hub, 12 Dec. 2025
Yet Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, among others, insisted that Brown, whose archaic-modern style telescopes entire epochs into a few flinty lines, belongs among the major twentieth-century bards.
—Alex Ross, New Yorker, 24 Nov. 2025
Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 30 Jan. 2026
But there’s nothing slack, or lazy, or subjective, or self-indulgent, about the elaborate verse-craft of those bards.
—Literary Hub, 12 Dec. 2025
Yet Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, among others, insisted that Brown, whose archaic-modern style telescopes entire epochs into a few flinty lines, belongs among the major twentieth-century bards.
—Alex Ross, New Yorker, 24 Nov. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for bards
poets
Noun
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Foreigners have been streaming into Switzerland for centuries—poets, painters, alpinists—and the country long ago adapted to their presence.—
Alice Gregory,
Condé Nast Traveler,
11 Feb. 2026
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Clinical accuracy is not something with which poets have traditionally tended to preoccupy themselves, but Tennyson’s account of mental extremity impressed the experts.—
James Parker,
The Atlantic,
10 Feb. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Bards.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/bards. Accessed 15 Feb. 2026.
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