Art & MusicGreek → English
Melodeon
/məˈloʊdiən/noun
A small reed organ pumped by foot pedals, or in British usage a button accordion.
The Greek roots
μέλος
mélos
tune, limb, song
ᾠδή
ōidḗ
song
Literally: “a sung tune”
The story of the word
μελῳδία joins a tune to a song, and it is the source of melody. German makers coined Melodion for a keyed reed instrument, and American workshops sold melodeons by the thousand through the 1840s and 1850s, cheap enough for a parlour or a country chapel that could not afford a pipe organ. British music hall then applied the same word to the button accordion, so the two traditions mean different objects when they say it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → German coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1840s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
melodyodeprosodyrhapsodymelisma
In a sentence
The melodeon in the chapel still works if someone pumps hard enough.
He played a melodeon at every wedding in the valley for forty years.