psalm
/sɑm/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.56 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
One of the hymns by David and others, collected into one book of the Old Testament, or a modern metrical version of such a hymn for public worship.
verb
To extol in psalms; to make music; to sing
Example Sentences
- "to psalm his praises."
- "I psalmed like a Moslem high in his mosque. And like a Greek priest, I sang the divine liturgy of St. John Chrysostom."
Etymology
From Middle English salm or psalme, from Old English psealm, later reinforced from Old French psalme (modern French psaume), both from Latin psalmus, from Ancient Greek ψαλμός (psalmós, “the sound emanating from twitching or twanging perhaps with the hands or fingers, mostly of musical strings”) (from ψάλλω (psállō, “to make a sound by striking, touching, plucking, rubbing, twanging, or vibrating”)), but later in New Testament times the meaning of ψαλμός (psalmós) evolved from its Classical meaning of "a tune played to the harp" to a more general tune that could be played with any instrument; even a song sung with or without musical accompaniment. By the Byzantine Period, it lost all of its instrumental nuances.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /sɑm/
- British English: /sɑːm/
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Music.