melodrama
Americannoun
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melodramas
plural
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a dramatic form that does not observe the laws of cause and effect and that exaggerates emotion and emphasizes plot or action at the expense of characterization.
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melodramatic behavior or events.
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(in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries) a romantic dramatic composition with music interspersed.
noun
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a play, film, etc, characterized by extravagant action and emotion
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(formerly) a romantic drama characterized by sensational incident, music, and song
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overdramatic emotion or behaviour
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a poem or part of a play or opera spoken to a musical accompaniment
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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melodramatistnoun
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minimelodramanoun
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melodramaticsplural noun
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melodramaticadjective
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melodramaticallyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of melodrama
1800–10; < French mélodrame, equivalent to mélo- (< Greek mélos song) + drame drama
Explanation
A melodrama is a show or story with overly dramatic characters and plot lines. Many people like to escape their own troubles by watching what the characters go through on a weekly television melodrama. A melodrama has a thrilling plot, with many extreme twists, suspense, and plenty of romance. Soap operas and popular films can often be described as melodramas, full of the tension and excitement that draws a viewer in. Anything but mellow, melodrama comes from the Greek word melos, song, and the French drame, drama — because the original melodramas of the early 1800s were dramatic plays that included songs and music.
Vocabulary lists containing melodrama
Drama Terminology
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Literary Genres - Advanced
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Reading: Literature - Drama - Middle School
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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:
When the song outgrows the blue-ribbon crowd, they’re flown to Los Angeles for one nationally televised performance before falling out in a bit of dressing room melodrama.
From Salon ● Oct. 4, 2026
Inspired by the transient beauty of cherry blossoms, known in Japan as sakura — which is illustrated in their album cover, alongside a dark pegasus — much of the LP also hinges on melodrama.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
Tom Nolan praises this “gritty melodrama of familial love and hereditary tragedy.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026
A peak of pop excess, Raye's second full-length album is a 73-minute melodrama, sprinkled with golden age Hollywood glamour, show-stopping ballads, tongue twisting wordplay and genre smashing handbrake turns.
From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026
"But then," Yolanda says in the ominous voice of a radio melodrama, "then Papi found the letters."
From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez
Jeanine Basinger was the first film scholar to elevate the mid-20th-century melodramas known as “women’s weepies” as a genre and art form.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
Like the Sirkian melodramas of yesteryear, we go see movies like “Reminders of Him” because they’re highly entertaining — and, more often than not, decently made.
From Salon ● Mar. 19, 2026
Market participants have come to assume they will come out of these recurring melodramas intact.
From Barron's ● Jan. 24, 2026
It’s also a tender tale about the perils and promises of starting over that owes as much to Mexico’s trite telenovelas as it does to its big-hearted melodramas.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2024
From the look of it, one of her favorite Israeli melodramas.
From "Night Owls" by A.R. Vishny
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
