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dithyramb

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English

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Etymology

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From Latin dithyrambus, from Ancient Greek δῑθύραμβος (dīthúrambos). According to the American Heritage Dictionary, it is of non-Indo-European origin (Pre-Greek substrate, Illyrian/Phrygian), related to θρίαμβος and ἴαμβος.[1] Brandenstein also compares Sanskrit अङ्ग (aṅga, “member”).[2]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

dithyramb (plural dithyrambs)

  1. A raucous and ardent choral hymn sung in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus.
  2. A poem or oration in the same style.
    • 1969, Robert Conquest, “George Orwell”, in Arias from a Love Opera, and Other Poems, Macmillan, page 32:
      While those who drown a truth’s empiric part
      In dithyramb or dogma turn frenetic;
      — Than whom no writer could be less poetic
      He left this lesson for all verse, all art.
  3. An impassioned speech; a rant.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:diatribe
    • 1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 25:
      During the seven decades that have elapsed since that distracted wife, mother, and blindly impassioned mistress threw herself beneath the wheels of the train - thus terminating, with a gesture symbolic of what already had happened to her soul, her tragedy of disorientation - a tumultuous and unremitting dithyramb of romances, news reports, and unrecorded cries of anguish has been going up to the honor of the bull-demon of the labyrinth: the wrathful, destructive, maddening aspect of the same god who, when benign, is the vivifying principle of the world.

Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “dithyramb”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
  2. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN
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