Art & MusicGreek → English
Rhapsody
/ˈræpsədi/noun
An outpouring of enthusiasm, or a free-form musical piece in one movement.
The Greek roots
ῥάπτειν
rháptein
to stitch, to sew
ᾠδή
ōidḗ
song, ode
Literally: “song-stitching”
The story of the word
A ῥαψῳδός was a stitcher of songs, a professional reciter who performed Homer in relay, joining episode to episode. English used rhapsody first for a jumble, a stitched-together miscellany, which was an insult about incoherence. Liszt made it a musical title in the 1850s, Brahms and Rachmaninov followed, and only then did the word settle into meaning rapture rather than patchwork.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
odeparodymelodyprosody
In a sentence
He went into a rhapsody about the pasta and forgot to order anything else.
The programme closed with a Hungarian rhapsody and a very loud finish.