A
cobla esparsa ( literally meaning "scattered stanza") in
Old Occitan is the name used for a single-stanza poem in
troubadour poetry. They constitute about 15% of the troubadour output, and they are the dominant form among late (after 1220) authors like
Bertran Carbonel and
Guillem de l'Olivier. The term
cobla triada is used by modern scholars to indicate a
cobla taken from a longer poem and let stand on its own, but its original medieval meaning was a
cobla esparsa taken from a larger collection of such poems, since
coblas esparsas were usually presented in large groupings.