Art & MusicGreek → English
Stichomythia
/ˌstɪkoʊˈmɪθiə/noun
Dialogue in which characters speak alternate single lines of verse.
The Greek roots
στίχος
stíchos
row, line of verse
μῦθος
mŷthos
speech, tale
Literally: “line-by-line speech”
The story of the word
Greek tragedy has a gear it shifts into when two characters begin to fight: one verse line each, back and forth, no speeches. Nineteenth-century German scholars named the device Stichomythie, from the verb στιχομυθεῖν, to talk line by line, and English took it from them. Sophocles uses it to make an argument accelerate, and Euripides sometimes splits the line again so the exchange runs at half-line speed.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German scholarly coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
acrosticdistichhemistichmythology
In a sentence
The interrogation scene drops into stichomythia and the pace doubles.
Shakespeare borrows the trick for Richard and Anne, trading line for line over a coffin.