Words & WritingGreek → English
Palinode
/ˈpælɪnoʊd/noun
A poem in which the writer retracts something said in an earlier one.
The Greek roots
πάλιν
pálin
again, back
ᾠδή
ōidḗ
song, ode
Literally: “song sung back”
The story of the word
The form is named from a single legend. Stesichorus wrote an attack on Helen, went blind, and was told the blindness was her doing; he then wrote a poem saying she never went to Troy at all, only a phantom did, and his sight came back. Plato quotes the opening lines in the Phaedrus and then writes his own palinode about love. The word survives in English mostly for public retractions, usually reluctant ones.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
palindromeodeepodeparodyprosody
In a sentence
His second essay reads like a palinode for the first, though he never says so.