Keats

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. John Keats, a major English poet of the Romantic era known for works like 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'
2. A celebrated 19th-century English poet renowned for his sensuous imagery, melancholic beauty, and early death from tuberculosis at age 25
3. An influential Romantic poet whose letters and verse exploring themes of love, mortality, and aesthetic beauty continue to be widely studied and admired

Etymology: Before it belonged to the Romantic poet John Keats, this surname was a Middle English byname for a bird. "Kete" named the kite, a bird of prey, and the name was used for people, then passed down through families as a surname. The bird word comes from Old English "cȳta," which could mean either kite or bittern. It derives from a Proto-Germanic diminutive of a word for bird of prey, and that traces back to an Indo-European root meaning to cry or screech.