coda
[koh-duh]
- Music. a more or less independent passage, at the end of a composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close.
- Ballet. the concluding section of a ballet, especially the final part of a pas de deux.
- 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.
- anything that serves as a concluding part.
- Phonetics. the segment of a syllable following the nucleus, as the d-sound in good.Compare core1(def 14), onset(def 3).
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Origin of coda
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for coda
Contemporary Examples
Spoiler Alert: Do not read if you haven't seen season five episode eight of The Walking Dead, “Coda”
Norman Reedus on Motorcycles, Multitasking, And That Mid-Season Finale: “This Was A Rough One”Oliver Jones
December 2, 2014
The scene serves as the coda to The Last of the Unjust, and it ranks as one of the most splendid closing sequences in cinema.
Confessions of a Death Camp Collaborator: Claude Lanzmann’s ‘The Last of the Unjust’Jimmy So
February 7, 2014
And then the joke in the last verse of watching Walter Cronkite deliver the coda.
It has also, sadly, turned out to be the coda for its director's career.
The film, opening on December 17, has turned out to be a coda to the man's incarceration.
Historical Examples
He gets to the coda at last and takes it at a somewhat livelier pace.
A Book of BurlesquesH. L. Mencken
He tapped for the coda with the touch of a king knighting an illustrious subject.
Nights in LondonThomas Burke
The coda, as in the other sonata, is simply a strong passage of climax.
Contemporary American ComposersRupert Hughes
The third section is a varied repetition of the first with a coda.
The Life of Johannes Brahms (Vol 2 of 2)Florence May
It must be remembered that, as a point of structure, the existence of the coda is optional.
Studies in Modern Music, Second SeriesW. H. Hadow
coda
- music the final, sometimes inessential, part of a musical structure
- 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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Word Origin
C18: from Italian: tail, from Latin cauda
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for coda
n.
"concluding passage in a musical composition," 1753, from Latin cauda "tail of an animal."
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
coda
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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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.