Philharmonic
/ˌfɪlərˈmɒnɪk/adjective
Devoted to music, used chiefly in the names of orchestras and concert societies.
The Greek roots
Literally: “music-loving”
The story of the word
Italian filarmonico societies of the eighteenth century were bodies of amateurs and patrons who loved music without earning from it, and the word crossed into English with the Royal Philharmonic Society of 1813, which commissioned Beethoven's ninth symphony. ἁρμονία meant joinery long before it meant chords: a fitting-together, from ἁρμός, a joint, the term a shipwright used for how planks meet. Greek theorists then borrowed the carpentry for the fitting of intervals.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Italian → English
- First recorded
- 1813
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
The philharmonic plays the same programme twice, Friday and Sunday.
She joined the philharmonic chorus mainly to have somewhere to be on Tuesdays.