Showing results for "coda"

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• coda
  coda

  noun

  a more or less independent passage, at the end of a composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close.
• CODA
  CODA

  abbreviation

  child of deaf adultadults: a hearing person with a deaf parent or parents.

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Acronyms dictionary results for coda.

coda

¹ American  

[koh-duh] / ˈkoʊ də /

noun

• codas
  plural

1. Music. a more or less independent passage, at the end of a composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close.

2. Ballet. the concluding section of a ballet, especially the final part of a pas de deux.

3. 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.

4. anything that serves as a concluding part.

5. Phonetics. the segment of a syllable following the nucleus, as the d- sound in good.

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CODA ² American  

[koh-duh] / ˈkoʊ də /

abbreviation

1. child of deaf adultadults: a hearing person with a deaf parent or parents.

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coda British  

/ ˈkəʊdə /

noun

1. music the final, sometimes inessential, part of a musical structure

2. 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

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coda Cultural  

1. An ending to a piece of music, standing outside the formal structure of the piece. Coda is the Italian word for “tail.”

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• codas
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of coda¹

First recorded in 1745–55; from Italian, from Latin cauda “tail”; cf. queue

Origin of CODA²

First recorded in 1990–95

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Explanation

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

coda CODA codas

It’s really just a sad coda for Bass.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 14, 2026

The Ohio beginning, the championship return, the sentimental comic sans coda.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

Before the unfortunate coda to their story, Chapman and her brother seemed to be the perfect example of reconciliation.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 30, 2026

They form a coda to Rana Dasgupta’s thought-provoking but rather chaotic book “After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026

The advertising agency and the tobacco company were delighted by the unpaid publicity and were only too happy to confess to the error in the coda, “What do you want, good grammar or good taste?”

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

We want to be abundantly clear: The authors of this article are not affiliated with CODA, and their views do not reflect our values.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 20, 2026

Streamers have also gradually gained wider acceptance at the Academy Awards, where Apple won best picture for "CODA" in 2022.

From Barron's ● Dec. 17, 2025

After thinly slicing and staining tissue from 38 normal pancreatic samples onto hundreds of sequential 2D slides, the researchers developed CODA, a machine-learning pipeline, to analyze and reconstruct the slide images into digital 3D images.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 18, 2024

Also joining in the pre-game entertainment just before kickoff was country superstar Chris Stapleton singing "The Star-Spangled Banner," while "CODA" Oscar winner Troy Kotsur interpreted in ASL.

From Salon ● Feb. 14, 2023

And while Netflix has had several Academy Award nominations in the past, Apple became the first streaming company to win a Best Picture Oscar for "CODA".

From Reuters ● Apr. 18, 2022

We had already used machine intelligence to analyze the codas, recorded using bioacoustics, and determined that both the clicks and the intervals between clicks are important.

From Salon ● May 29, 2025

Two very quick codas to what you’re saying, Mark.

From Slate ● Dec. 30, 2024

AI-generated codas might only confuse whales, and could potentially spread false information between cetacean species.

From Salon ● Aug. 23, 2024

Sperm whales communicate through rhythmic patterns of clicks called codas.

From Science Daily ● May 16, 2024

Mind you, it is not that big fugued finale—surely one of the most astounding operatic codas in existence—that carries me away.

From Old Fogy His Musical Opinions and Grotesques by James Huneker

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Related Words

• afterword
• postscript
• summation

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