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
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.
Its subject is Hannah Upp, a young teacher prey to dissociative fugue states in which she forgets her own identity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2026
The song fuses Tamil folk music, Carnatic traditions, Western classical fugue and polka, with shifting tempos and finger snaps linking its contrasting sections.
From BBC ● Jun. 6, 2026
It allowed Elordi to renounce any hang-ups, surrendering to a fugue state of mind.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2025
The first half of the Met Orchestra’s concert included a somewhat bumpy reading of a fugue from Bach’s “Musical Offering,” in an instrumentation by Anton Webern.
From New York Times ● Feb. 2, 2024
The quintessential Bachian form of counterpoint was the fugue.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
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.
