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Dithyramb
Definitions
- 1 A raucous and ardent choral hymn sung in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus.
- 2 (ancient Greece) a passionate hymn (usually in honor of Dionysus) wordnet
- 3 A poem or oration in the same style.
"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."
- 4 a wildly enthusiastic speech or piece of writing wordnet
- 5 An impassioned speech; a rant.
"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 and ἴαμβος. Brandenstein also compares Sanskrit अङ्ग (aṅga, “member”).
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