Faith & RitualGreek → English
Psalm
/sɑːm/noun
A sacred song or poem, especially one of the hundred and fifty in the biblical book of Psalms.
The Greek roots
ψαλμός
psalmós
song sung to a harp
Literally: “a plucking of strings”
Follow a root:ψαλμός2 words
The story of the word
Psállein meant to pluck, first a bowstring and then a harp string, and psalmós was the music that came off it. The Septuagint translators used the word for the Hebrew mizmor, and the instrument stayed inside the name long after the singing went unaccompanied. Psaltery is the instrument, Psalter the book, and in Greek churches the cantor is still the psáltis.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- Old English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
psalterpsalterypsalmody
In a sentence
He read the twenty-third psalm at the graveside because it was the only one anyone knew.