Art & MusicGreek → English
Choir
/ˈkwaɪər/noun
An organised group of singers, or the part of a church where they sit.
The Greek roots
χορός
khorós
dance, band of dancers
Literally: “dancing band”
Follow a root:χορός6 words
The story of the word
The χορός of Athenian drama danced as much as it sang, on the round floor below the stage. Latin chorus went through Old French cuer and reached English about 1300 as quire, which is how the King James Bible still spells it. Seventeenth-century writers respelled the word to show the Latin, leaving a modern shape that gives no hint of how it sounds.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- c. 1300
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
choruschoralchoreographychorister
In a sentence
The choir rehearses on Thursdays in the cold end of the hall.
She sang in a choir for eleven years and never learned to read music.