song cycle

Save This Word!

noun

a group of art songs that are usually all by the same poet and composer and have a unifying subject or idea.

QUIZ

QUIZ YOURSELF ON "IS" VS. "ARE"

"Is" it time for a new quiz? "Are" you ready? Then prove your excellent skills on using "is" vs. "are."

Question 1 of 7

IS and ARE are both forms of which verb?

have

TAKE THE QUIZ TO FIND OUT

Origin of song cycle

First recorded in 1895–1900

Words nearby song cycle

son et lumière, song, song and dance, songbird, songbook, song cycle, songfest, song form, songful, Songhai, Songhua

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2022

How to use song cycle in a sentence

So here I am in my requisite Lululemon pants, grunting along to an old hip-hop song at a most ungodly hour.
How Taryn Toomey’s ‘The Class’ Became New York’s Latest Fitness Craze|Lizzie Crocker|January 9, 2015|DAILY BEAST
I still do find it a tremendously useful device to invent a character and have the character sing the song.
Belle & Sebastian Aren’t So Shy Anymore|James Joiner|January 7, 2015|DAILY BEAST
In 2012, as a 10th grader, Lean says he recorded his first legitimate song, “Hurt.”
The Cult of Yung Lean: ‘I’m Building An Anarchistic Society From the Ground Up’|Marlow Stern|January 4, 2015|DAILY BEAST
So we picked out the song (“Rhiannon,” click here for video), and Deer Tick learned it.
Deer Tick's John McCauley on Ten Years in Rock and Roll|James Joiner|January 2, 2015|DAILY BEAST

So this is Christmas, as the song goes, and what have we done?
No Gods, No Cops, No Masters|James Poulos|January 1, 2015|DAILY BEAST
At this moment the tinkling of a mule's bells, mingled with the song of the muleteer, came on the air.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846|Various
Gushing waters thrilled the ears with the sweetness of an old familiar song.
The Giant of the North|R.M. Ballantyne
The song stopped abruptly, the music died away, there was an interval of silence no one broke.
The Wave|Algernon Blackwood
"He 's getting well," thought Black Sheep, who knew the song through all its seventeen verses.
Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II|Rudyard Kipling
As Edna waited for her husband she sang low a little song that Robert had sung as they crossed the bay.
The Awakening and Selected Short Stories|Kate Chopin

British Dictionary definitions for song cycle

song cycle

noun

any of several groups of songs written by composers during and after the Romantic period, each series employing texts, usually by one poet, relating a story or grouped around a central motif

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012