fugue

American  

[fyoog] / fyug /

noun

1. 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.

2. 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.

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fugue British  

/ fjuːɡ /

noun

1. a musical form consisting essentially of a theme repeated a fifth above or a fourth below the continuing first statement

2. 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

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Other Word Forms

• fuguelike
  adjective

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.

Example Sentences

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

In uniform, Mr. Merkel started experiencing strange fugue states, where he would be awake but barely responsive and would retain little memory afterward of what had happened.

From New York Times • May 2, 2024

And the podcast's style is woven together in what sounds somewhat like the fugue state one lands in at a cocktail party deep into the night, where there is and is not an audience.

From Salon • Jul. 15, 2023

The chorus, in the old musical forms of canon and fugue, demands light.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 20, 2023

He called his system ‘The Well-Tempered Keyboard’, landmarked for ever in history by his composing two companion pieces, a prelude and a fugue, for every one of the newly adapted key-families.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall

Related Words

• exodus