Words & WritingGreek → English
Parody
/ˈpærədi/noun
An imitation of a work or a style exaggerated for comic effect.
The Greek roots
παρά
pará
beside, against
ᾠδή
ōidḗ
song
Literally: “a song sung beside”
The story of the word
παρῳδία was a song set against another song, a mocking counter-melody to something serious. The surviving example is the Batrachomyomachia, the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, which runs Homeric epic machinery over a pond fight. English took the word in the 1590s and Ben Jonson used it early. The ody at the end is ᾠδή, song, the same element in comedy, tragedy, rhapsody and melody.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1590s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
odecomedyrhapsodymelody
In a sentence
The sketch was a parody of a party political broadcast, right down to the fake sincerity.