fugue
Americannoun
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Music. a polyphonic composition based upon one, two, or more themes, which are enunciated by several voices or parts in turn, subjected to contrapuntal treatment, and gradually built up into a complex form having somewhat distinct divisions or stages of development and a marked climax at the end.
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Psychiatry. a period during which a person experiences loss of memory, often begins a new life, and, upon recovery, remembers nothing of the amnesic phase.
noun
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a musical form consisting essentially of a theme repeated a fifth above or a fourth below the continuing first statement
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psychiatry a dreamlike altered state of consciousness, lasting from a few hours to several days, during which a person loses his or her memory for his or her previous life and often wanders away from home
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of fugue
First recorded in 1590–1600; from French, from Italian fuga, from Latin: “flight”
Explanation
The noun fugue describes a psychiatric disorder that involves memory loss and travel. If you wake up in New Jersey and can’t remember how you got there, one possibility is that you were in a fugue state. Fugue traces back to the Latin word fuga, meaning “flight.” If you’re in a fugue state, it's like you're fleeing from your own identity. Symptoms of this rare condition include amnesia and wandering, typically in an attempt to create a new identity. Musicians might know that fugue is also the name of a musical form in which a theme is introduced and then repeated in higher or lower notes, as if the theme is flying around the scale.
Vocabulary lists containing fugue
Refugee
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Psychological Conditions and Disorders
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Psychology
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Miller appeared to kick off the signing ceremony, entering to Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" and looking suitably vampiric.
From Salon • May 4, 2025
"Fugue Americaine" is a fictitious story about the late legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz and tells of the travels of brothers Franz and Oskar Wertheimer to Cuba to attend one of his concerts.
From Reuters • May 3, 2023
Try to avoid shivering as you listen to Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” — a stormy organ piece that’s become standard for horror films.
From Washington Post • Oct. 27, 2021
Fugue and chorale are evoked as devices to restore peace and order and grandeur.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 9, 2020
In this sense, the Art of Fugue and the St. Matthew Passion were, for the evolving organism of human thought, feathered wings, apposing thumbs, new layers of frontal cortex.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
