Art & MusicGreek → English
Stasimon
/ˈstæsɪmɒn/noun
A choral ode sung between episodes of a Greek tragedy, once the chorus has taken its position.
The Greek roots
στάσιμος
stásimos
standing, stationary
Literally: “the standing song”
Follow a root:στάσιμος1 word
The story of the word
The chorus marches in singing the parodos and then stays put, so everything it sings from then on is stationary song. Aristotle separates the two in the Poetics by their metre. The root is ἵστημι, to stand, the busiest verb in the language: it also produced stasis, ecstasy, apostasy and system.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
Same family
stasisstaticapostasyecstasysystem
In a sentence
The third stasimon is the one everybody quotes, the ode on the wonders of man.