Canon
/ˈkænən/noun
An accepted rule or standard, the authorised list of works in a field, or a piece of music in which voices repeat the same line in turn.
The Greek roots
Literally: “measuring rod”
The story of the word
Κανών was a straight reed used as a ruler, from κάννα, reed, itself borrowed into Greek from a Semitic language. The physical rod became the abstract rule, then the church's approved list of books, then any body of accepted work. The musical canon is the strictest sense of all: one voice states the line and the others are bound by rule to follow it. Cannon, the gun, is a separate word from Italian cannone, big tube, which goes back to the same reed.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old English → English
- First recorded
- Old English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
Pachelbel's canon is three voices chasing each other over the same bass line.