hymn
Americannoun
-
hymns
plural
verb (used with object)
-
hymns,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hymned,
past participle, past
-
hymning
present participle
verb (used without object)
-
hymns,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hymned,
past participle, past
-
hymning
present participle
noun
-
a Christian song of praise sung to God or a saint
-
a similar song praising other gods, a nation, etc
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
hymnsimple
-
hymnssimple
-
have hymnedperfect
-
has hymnedperfect
-
am hymningprogressive
-
are hymningprogressive
-
is hymningprogressive
-
have been hymningperfect progressive
-
has been hymningperfect progressive
Past
-
hymnedsimple
-
had hymnedperfect
-
was hymningprogressive
-
were hymningprogressive
-
had been hymningperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hymn
before 1000; < Latin hymnus < Greek hýmnos song in praise of gods or heroes; replacing Middle English ymne (< Old French ) and Old English ymn (< Late Latin ymnus )
Explanation
A hymn is a religious song, especially one praising God. People often sing hymns during church services. The word hymn comes from the Late Latin hymnus, "song of praise," and the Greek hymnos, "festive song in praise of gods or heroes." Though many people think of hymns as Christian, they're used in many other religions too, from ancient Greek hymns to deities, to Sikh hymns and Hindu hymns to many gods. What these songs have in common is giving thanks or praise to a god or gods.
Vocabulary lists containing hymn
Poetry: Genres
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Reading: Literature - Poetry - Middle School
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"Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." and "I Have a Dream"
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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.
See Examples For:
Ms. Perry’s parents visit and all together they sing a hymn.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
If you want to find an observer singing from the same hymn sheet, sooner or later you will hit pay dirt.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 28, 2026
Beautiful Love, external, co-written with Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody, is a soaring hymn to embracing your flaws and making peace with life's highs and lows.
From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2026
Perhaps the organizers thought the crowd wouldn’t dare boo during a patriotic hymn.
From Salon ● Jun. 11, 2026
“Let us turn to hymn one hundred eighteen,” announced Reverend Buckminster.
From "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy" by Gary D. Schmidt
At a municipal center, a choir of about a hundred faithful practices hymns for the ceremony.
From Barron's ● Oct. 14, 2026
That scientist was annoyed that the scraps of paper he used to mark hymns for his church choir would fall out by Sunday.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 4, 2026
She met Ruben when she was a child, when he would come to their school to sing religious hymns in assembly and ran a church club in Clifton in Nottingham.
From BBC ● Feb. 7, 2026
Protesters, some wearing clerical stoles draped over their shoulders, knelt while singing hymns and reciting the Lord’s Prayer in frigid conditions before being handcuffed and led away, video showed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 23, 2026
The old organ had collapsed a few years back, so Mrs. Milton had to pound out hymns on an out-of-tune piano.
From "The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs" by Betty G. Birney
After living for two years in a small cabin beside Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, he hymned the results in his classic account Walden, published in 1854.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
That has changed, or has seemed to change, recently, with Marine taking on a group of surreptitious haute-fonctionnaire “Horaces”—the name is a reference to the great if obsequious Roman poet who hymned the emperor Augustus.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 30, 2017
Happiness, as hymned in these renditions, would never be won easily.
From New York Times ● Aug. 3, 2016
Famous fans like Stewart Lee have hymned the show's odd profundity: Jackson's ideology throws into relief the purposelessness of our supposedly meaningful lives.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 5, 2011
With souls released from earthly tether, We hymned the tender moon together.
From A Selection from the Works of Frederick Locker by Hannah Jane Locker-Lampson
Holst leaves the listener in the far removes of outer space, with Neptune being a study in musical mysticism, highlighted by a hidden hymning women’s chorus, as if heard from a mysterious distance.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2023
And the poet and theorist Fred Moten, for his hymning of knowledge’s “undercommons,” its deviant intellectual crosscurrents and flight-paths, “fugitive enlightenment.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 20, 2022
Bush went beyond hymning the “thousand points of light” to oversee the establishment of the Commission on National and Community Service.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 3, 2018
It’s a useful rejoinder to evangelists hymning the inevitable progress of “tech,” and gurus divining what technology “wants.”
From Slate ● Jun. 1, 2015
To me it seems that the Rishis when hymning Soma simply gave him all the predicates of God that came into their heads.
From Myth, Ritual And Religion, Vol. 2 (of 2) by Andrew Lang
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
