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.
There’s also an immense amount of drama to the sport; leaning into that truly transports the student away from a club experience and into a kind of delicious, LARP-y fugue state.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 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
Yet investors didn’t show the same anxiety once trading started, sending the indices into a sort of fugue state.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 3, 2026
Not yogurt eaten in a fugue state between Slack pings.
From Salon ● Feb. 19, 2026
Someone had gone completely fugue on the bed.
From "Feed" by M.T. Anderson
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.
