Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1902, from French, literally "free verse," lines of varying length.\nI remarked some years ago, in speaking of vers libre, that 'no vers is libre for the man who wants to do a good job.' The term, which fifty years ago had an exact meaning in relation to the French alexandrine, now means too much to mean anything at all.
[T.S. Eliot, introduction to "Selected Poems of Ezra Pound," 1928]
WordNet
n. unrhymed verse without a consistent metrical pattern [syn: free verse]
Wikipedia
Usage examples of "vers libre".
He thought of his recent Ode to Antares, which, unlike his earlier productions, was written in vers libre and had a strong modernistic irony mingled with its planturous lyricism.
You are at liberty to write any form, or any kind of vers libre, that you choose.
It didn't last long, because she gave me the heave-ho and got betrothed to a fellow called Gorringe who wrote vers libre, but while it lasted I felt like one of those Ethiopian slaves Cleopatra used to push around, and I chafed more than somewhat.
It was only a bit of vers libre, that pitiful compromise of the poet who overleaps prose yet falls short of the divine melody of numbers.