dithyramb
/ˈdɪθ.ɪ.ɹæm/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.11 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An impassioned speech; a rant.
Example Sentences
- "Now of the numerical constitution of the chorus before Aeschylus we know nothing; but to him, in the Suppliant Maidens at least, it was a happy coincidence that the myth gave to Danaüs fifty daughters, a number exactly equal to that of the chorus of the dithyramb, from which tragedy itself had sprung."
- "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."
- "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."
Etymology
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 (thríambos) and ἴαμβος (íambos). Brandenstein also compares Sanskrit अङ्ग (aṅga, “member”).
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: dithyrambus, δῑθύραμβος, -