Psalm
noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A sacred song; a poetical composition for use in the praise or worship of God.
- 2 any sacred song used to praise the deity wordnet
- 3 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.
- 1 To extol in psalms; to make music; to sing
"to psalm his praises."
- 2 sing or celebrate in psalms wordnet
Example
More examples"In 1961, Nikolai Khrapov received 7 years in the camps for writing the psalm "Greetings to you, Christ’s budding tribe", which later became the anthem of the Russian Baptist youth."
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.
Related phrases
More for "psalm"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.