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• coda
  coda

  noun

  a more or less independent passage, at the end of a composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close.
• CODA
  CODA

  abbreviation

  child of deaf adultadults: a hearing person with a deaf parent or parents.

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Acronyms dictionary results for coda.

coda

¹ American  

[koh-duh] / ˈkoʊ də /

noun

• codas
  plural

1. Music. a more or less independent passage, at the end of a composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close.

2. Ballet. the concluding section of a ballet, especially the final part of a pas de deux.

3. a concluding section or part, especially one of a conventional form and serving as a summation of preceding themes, motifs, etc., as in a work of literature or drama.

4. anything that serves as a concluding part.

5. Phonetics. the segment of a syllable following the nucleus, as the d- sound in good.

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CODA ² American  

[koh-duh] / ˈkoʊ də /

abbreviation

1. child of deaf adultadults: a hearing person with a deaf parent or parents.

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coda British  

/ ˈkəʊdə /

noun

1. music the final, sometimes inessential, part of a musical structure

2. a concluding part of a literary work, esp a summary at the end of a novel of further developments in the lives of the characters

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coda Cultural  

1. An ending to a piece of music, standing outside the formal structure of the piece. Coda is the Italian word for “tail.”

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• codas
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of coda¹

First recorded in 1745–55; from Italian, from Latin cauda “tail”; cf. queue

Origin of CODA²

First recorded in 1990–95

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Explanation

A coda is a concluding segment of a piece of music, a dance, or a statement. It's usually short and adds a final embellishment beyond a natural ending point. Like this. Coda comes from the Latin word cauda, meaning "tail," and it's good to think of it as a tail tacked onto something that in and of itself is already a whole. If you tell a story about your crazy experience getting lost in the country and sleeping at a farmer's house, you might add, as a coda, that the farmer ended up visiting you too, a year later.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

coda CODA codas

It’s really just a sad coda for Bass.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 14, 2026

The Ohio beginning, the championship return, the sentimental comic sans coda.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

Before the unfortunate coda to their story, Chapman and her brother seemed to be the perfect example of reconciliation.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 30, 2026

The Netflix series gets a feature-film coda starring Cillian Murphy and Barry Keoghan, following the Shelby family as it becomes entangled in a German plan to destabilize the British economy.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 19, 2026

What is the code of normalcy before it becomes corrupted by cancer’s coda?

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Streamers have also gradually gained wider acceptance at the Academy Awards, where Apple won best picture for "CODA" in 2022.

From Barron's ● Dec. 17, 2025

After thinly slicing and staining tissue from 38 normal pancreatic samples onto hundreds of sequential 2D slides, the researchers developed CODA, a machine-learning pipeline, to analyze and reconstruct the slide images into digital 3D images.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 18, 2024

She also reports that Marlee Matlin had it written into her contract for "CODA" that she would walk off the film if hearing people were hired to play her family.

From Salon ● Jul. 26, 2023

In the pre-game ceremony, country star Chris Stapleton sang the U.S. national anthem while Oscar-winning "CODA" star Troy Kotsur performed the song in American Sign Language.

From Reuters ● Feb. 13, 2023

Meanwhile, romantic film CODA, war film Mincemeat and TV series The Pact have received three nominations each.

From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2022

Sperm whales use a series of clicks, called codas, to communicate.

From Salon ● May 29, 2025

Two very quick codas to what you’re saying, Mark.

From Slate ● Dec. 30, 2024

Artificial intelligence may be perfect for analyzing every aspect of codas except for the emotional bonds they signify between individuals.

From Salon ● Aug. 23, 2024

Sperm whales communicate through rhythmic patterns of clicks called codas.

From Science Daily ● May 16, 2024

Beethoven added important introductions or codas, or even both, to some of the movements of his sonatas.

From The Pianoforte Sonata Its Origin and Development by J. S. (John South) Shedlock

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Related Words

• afterword
• postscript
• summation

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