palinode
Americannoun
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a poem in which the poet retracts something said in an earlier poem.
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a recantation.
noun
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a poem in which the poet recants something he has said in a former poem
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rare a recantation
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of palinode
1590–1600; < Late Latin palinōdia < Greek palinōidía a singing again, especially a recanting, equivalent to pálin again, back + ōid ( ḗ ) ode + -ia -ia
Explanation
A palinode is a poem that retracts a feeling expressed in a previous work. If a poet's opinions change, they can use a palinode to reverse their earlier stance, perhaps offering praise where they once offered criticism. If you're embarrassed by the rhyming verse you wrote in first grade about your love of Pokémon, you may want to compose a palinode that recants that sentiment. Palinode is derived from the Greek palinoidia or "poetic retraction," and the roots palin, "back," and oide, "song." Ancient Greeks invented the palinode form, which Chaucer used at the very end of The Canterbury Tales to apologize for its vulgar language and ask for forgiveness.
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.
She punished him by blindness, and he indited a palinode, explaining that it was not she who went to Troy, but a woman fashioned in her likeness, by Zeus, out of mist and light.
From Adventures Among Books by Lang, Andrew
This palinode is, no doubt, intended to give a plausible air of fairness to the book, but such a death-bed repentance comes too late, and makes the whole preceding history seem not fair but foolish.
From Reviews by Wilde, Oscar
As if it were any man's business to sing a palinode for another's error; or as if anything that is said in that work of mine under any character whatever, were my own opinion.
From Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. by Erasmus, Desiderius
I no longer hear the voice of prudence seducing me, as it did a few days since, to a palinode in complicity with a romantic morning of white mist.
From Youth and Egolatry by Fassett, Jacob S. (Jacob Sloat)
His conscious has been awakened, and like Stesichorus when he had reviled the lovely Helen he will sing a palinode for having blasphemed the majesty of love.
From Phaedrus by Jowett, Benjamin
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.
