Faith & RitualGreek → English
Hymnody
/ˈhɪmnədi/noun
The singing of hymns, or the body of hymns belonging to a church or period.
The Greek roots
ὕμνος
hýmnos
song of praise
ᾠδή
ōidḗ
song, ode
Literally: “hymn singing”
The story of the word
In Homer a ὕμνος is simply a song or lay with no altar attached, and the word has no secure family in Greek; it may be older than Greek itself. Hymnody entered English in the eighteenth century, in the middle of a long argument about whether a congregation could lawfully sing anything but the Psalms. Isaac Watts wrote his way through that argument and won it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
hymnodemelodyrhapsodyparody
In a sentence
Welsh hymnody has a sound no organ can spoil.
She wrote a history of American hymnody from the shape-note books onward.