Music. a more or less independent passage, at the end of a composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close.
Ballet. the concluding section of a ballet, especially the final part of a pas de deux.
a concluding section or part, especially one of a conventional form and serving as a summation of preceding themes, motifs, etc., as in a work of literature or drama.
anything that serves as a concluding part.
Phonetics. the segment of a syllable following the nucleus, as the d- sound in good.
music the final, sometimes inessential, part of a musical structure
a concluding part of a literary work, esp a summary at the end of a novel of further developments in the lives of the characters
First recorded in 1745–55; from Italian, from Latin cauda “tail”; cf. queue
First recorded in 1990–95
A coda is a concluding segment of a piece of music, a dance, or a statement. It's usually short and adds a final embellishment beyond a natural ending point. Like this. Coda comes from the Latin word cauda, meaning "tail," and it's good to think of it as a tail tacked onto something that in and of itself is already a whole. If you tell a story about your crazy experience getting lost in the country and sleeping at a farmer's house, you might add, as a coda, that the farmer ended up visiting you too, a year later.
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Two reliable sources: Meathead Goldwyn’s exhaustive site, AmazingRibs.com, and barbecue yoda Steven Raichlen’s BarbecueBible.com.
From Washington Post • Jul. 21, 2017
Ne-Yo as the relationship yoda was kind of cute.
From The Guardian • Oct. 22, 2015
Hearing Mr. Hoffman wax philosophical about technology, it’s easy to understand why so many here seem to view him as something of a yoda.
From New York Times • Nov. 5, 2011
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.
