hymn
Americannoun
-
hymns
plural
verb (used with object)
-
hymns,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hymned,
past participle, past
-
hymning
present participle
verb (used without object)
-
hymns,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hymned,
past participle, past
-
hymning
present participle
noun
-
a Christian song of praise sung to God or a saint
-
a similar song praising other gods, a nation, etc
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
hymnsimple
-
hymnssimple
-
have hymnedperfect
-
has hymnedperfect
-
am hymningprogressive
-
are hymningprogressive
-
is hymningprogressive
-
have been hymningperfect progressive
-
has been hymningperfect progressive
Past
-
hymnedsimple
-
had hymnedperfect
-
was hymningprogressive
-
were hymningprogressive
-
had been hymningperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hymn
before 1000; < Latin hymnus < Greek hýmnos song in praise of gods or heroes; replacing Middle English ymne (< Old French ) and Old English ymn (< Late Latin ymnus )
Explanation
A hymn is a religious song, especially one praising God. People often sing hymns during church services. The word hymn comes from the Late Latin hymnus, "song of praise," and the Greek hymnos, "festive song in praise of gods or heroes." Though many people think of hymns as Christian, they're used in many other religions too, from ancient Greek hymns to deities, to Sikh hymns and Hindu hymns to many gods. What these songs have in common is giving thanks or praise to a god or gods.
Vocabulary lists containing hymn
Poetry: Genres
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Reading: Literature - Poetry - Middle School
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"Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." and "I Have a Dream"
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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.
See Examples For:
Choir Only Men Aloud will sing her huge hit Total Eclipse of the Heart and Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water, while the congregation will sing hymn Calon Lan.
From BBC ● Aug. 16, 2026
Perhaps the organizers thought the crowd wouldn’t dare boo during a patriotic hymn.
From Salon ● Jun. 11, 2026
So it makes sense that “The Lincoln Lawyer” is as big a hymn to the city as “Bosch.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2026
During the service, a video was broadcast of Jin and others singing a hymn adapted from a poem Bonhoeffer wrote shortly before his execution.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 2026
“And so soft? Good Lord, if you’re going to play the hymn, Turner Buckminster, play the hymn!”
From "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy" by Gary D. Schmidt
Through subtle harmonic shifts on “Crepuscule With Nellie,” perhaps Monk’s loveliest melody, he accentuates the song’s inherent connection to blues and church hymns.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
From every camp come hymns to the principle of free passage without saying how to uphold it in present circumstances.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026
Some of the hymns and liturgy were the same as those sung by Anglicans around the world, but there were also differences, like the upbeat worship music that had the congregation dancing in the pews.
From BBC ● Mar. 2, 2026
He said traditional hymns will be sung by the church's Filipino community.
From BBC ● Jan. 16, 2026
I’m reminded of one of the classic hymns we used to sing at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church: “It Is Well with My Soul.”
From "While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement" by Carolyn Maull McKinstry
After living for two years in a small cabin beside Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, he hymned the results in his classic account Walden, published in 1854.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
Two of the credited writers, he says, had probably never even been to West Virginia when they hymned the beauty of its valleys and rivers.
From New York Times ● Aug. 16, 2017
That has changed, or has seemed to change, recently, with Marine taking on a group of surreptitious haute-fonctionnaire “Horaces”—the name is a reference to the great if obsequious Roman poet who hymned the emperor Augustus.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 30, 2017
And it's life as a whole lot that ends up getting hymned, not the path through it on which the film chooses to bestow its particular seal of approval.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 11, 2011
They, when first they have hymned Apollo, and next Leto and Artemis the Archer, then sing in memory of the men and women of old time, enchanting the tribes of mortals.
From The Homeric Hymns A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological by Andrew Lang
Holst leaves the listener in the far removes of outer space, with Neptune being a study in musical mysticism, highlighted by a hidden hymning women’s chorus, as if heard from a mysterious distance.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2023
And the poet and theorist Fred Moten, for his hymning of knowledge’s “undercommons,” its deviant intellectual crosscurrents and flight-paths, “fugitive enlightenment.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 20, 2022
Bush went beyond hymning the “thousand points of light” to oversee the establishment of the Commission on National and Community Service.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 3, 2018
It’s a useful rejoinder to evangelists hymning the inevitable progress of “tech,” and gurus divining what technology “wants.”
From Slate ● Jun. 1, 2015
To me it seems that the Rishis when hymning Soma simply gave him all the predicates of God that came into their heads.
From Myth, Ritual And Religion, Vol. 2 (of 2) by Andrew Lang
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.
