melody

See also Melody

English

Wikipedia

Etymology

Middle English melodie, from Old French melodie, from Latin melodia, from Ancient Greek μελῳδία (melōidiā, “singing, chanting”), from μέλος (mélos, “musical phrase”) + ἀοιδή (aoidḗ, “song”), contracted form ᾠδή (ōidḗ).

Pronunciation

• (GenAm) IPA: /ˈmɛlədi/, X-SAMPA: /"mEl@di/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• (RP) IPA: /ˈmelədi/, X-SAMPA: /"mel@di/

Noun

melody (plural melodies)

1. tune; sequence of notes that makes up a musical phrase
   • 1954, Alexander Alderson, chapter 1, The Subtle Minotaur^[1]:

     Slowly she turned round and faced towards a neat white bungalow, set some way back from the path behind a low hedge of golden privet. No light showed, but someone there was playing the piano. The strange elusiveness of the soft, insistent melody seemed to draw her forward.

Synonyms

• (sequence of notes that makes up a musical phrase): tune

Derived terms

• melodic
• melodious
• melodium

Related terms

• melodrama

Translations

sequence of notes that makes up a musical phrase

• Armenian: մեղեդի (hy) (meġedi)
• Bulgarian: мелодия (bg) (melodija) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 曲調 (cmn), 曲调 (cmn) (qǔdiào), 曲子 (cmn) (qǔzi), 歌曲 (cmn) (gēqǔ)

• Czech: melodie (cs) f
• Dutch: melodie (nl) f
• Esperanto: melodio (eo)
• Estonian: meloodia (et)
• Finnish: melodia (fi), sävel (fi)
• French: mélodie (fr) f
• German: Melodie (de) f
• Greek: μελωδία (el) (melodía) f
• Hungarian: dallam (hu), melódia (hu)
• Ido: melodio (io)
• Italian: melodia (it) f

• Japanese: 歌曲 (ja), 調べ (ja), 旋律 (ja)
• Jèrriais: mélodie f
• Kurdish:

  Sorani: ئاواز (ku)

• Latin: melodia (la)
• Norwegian: melodi (no) m
• Polish: melodia (pl) f
• Portuguese: melodia (pt) f
• Romanian: melodie (ro) f
• Russian: мелодия (ru) (m'elódija) f
• Scottish Gaelic: fonn (gd) m, port (gd) m, mànran (gd) m
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: мелодија (sh) f, напев (sh) m

  Roman: melodija (sh) f, napev (sh) m

• Slovene: melodija (sl) f
• Spanish: melodía (es) f
• Swedish: melodi (sv) c
• Turkish: melodi (tr)

See also

• scale
• tune
• harmony
• music