Art & MusicGreek → English
Threnody
/ˈθrɛnədi/noun
A song or poem of mourning for the dead.
The Greek roots
θρῆνος
thrênos
dirge, lament
ᾠδή
ōidḗ
song
Literally: “lament song”
The story of the word
The θρῆνος was the composed lament sung over a body, kept distinct from the γόος, the raw wailing of the family, and Pindar and Simonides wrote them on commission. English took the compound for anything written in memory of the dead. The best known now is Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima of 1960, scored for fifty-two strings and built out of clusters and scrapes rather than a tune.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
oderhapsodypalinode
In a sentence
The last movement is a threnody for the men of his village.
She read a threnody she had written the night before.