monody
Americannoun
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monodies
plural
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a Greek ode sung by a single voice, as in a tragedy; lament.
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a poem in which the poet or speaker laments another's death; threnody.
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Music.
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a style of composition in which one part or melody predominates; homophony, as distinguished from polyphony.
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a piece in this style.
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noun
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(in Greek tragedy) an ode sung by a single actor
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any poem of lament for someone's death
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music a style of composition consisting of a single vocal part, usually with accompaniment
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of monody
First recorded in 1580–90; from Late Latin monōdia, from Greek monōidía “a solo, monody,” equivalent to monōid(ós) “singing alone” + -ia noun suffix; see mon-, ode) -y 3
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:
“The Wishing Tree,” a beautiful, seemingly slight nine-line monody, commemorates his laconic, generous mother—“I thought of her as the wishing tree that died / And saw it lifted, root and branch, to heaven.”
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 3, 2019
Suddenly, a hidden 35-piece baroque orchestra begins the accompaniment to the introductory monody, and a spotlight picks out a bearded Father Time at the door of a pyramid above the abyss.
From Time Magazine Archive
A prelude or a fugue of Bach is essentially a "monody," a composition of one idea, which preponderates so decidedly as to enforce its character and individuality upon the work; nay, it is the work.
From The Masters and their Music A series of illustrative programs with biographical, esthetical, and critical annotations by W. S. B. (William Smythe Babcock) Mathews
Overhead the detached clouds swept swift as eagles, 167 casting shadows cold as winter, and in the dwarfed century-old trees the wind breathed a sad monody.
From Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger A Romance of the Mountain West by Hamlin Garland
It is a short monody, or Ode of one stanza containing fourteen lines, with uncommonly frequent returns of rhymes more or less combined.
From A History of English Poetry: an Unpublished Continuation by Thomas Warton
Take away the last stanzas, which should be applied more definitely to the body, or cut away altogether as a lie against eternal verity, and the poem stands as one of the finest of monodies.
From The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) by Sir Frederic G. (Frederic George) Kenyon
The slave class is the topic of many of these monodies: either the virtues of the loyal slave are extolled140, or the knavery of the cunning slave141.
From The Dramatic Values in Plautus by Wilton Wallace Blancké
I had in my collection no fewer than forty-seven monodies and dirges on Stonewall Jackson; some dozens on Ashby and a score on Stuart.
From Four Years in Rebel Capitals An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death by T. C. DeLeon
So much for them: but still I'd like to show The way in which your monodies are framed.
From The Frogs by Aristophanes
Its monodies are twelve poems, whose music strives to change yet ever is the same.
From The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
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.
