Melody

How to spell melody

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce melody

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does melody mean?

1. nounA pleasing sequence of musical notes that forms the recognisable tune of a piece.

Melody in a sentence

• The violinist played a gentle melody that filled the hall.

• He could hum the melody long after the concert ended.

Where does melody come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word descends from the Greek meloidia, which meant 'singing' or 'a tune for lyric poetry'. It was assembled from melos, meaning 'song' or 'musical phrase', and aoidos, meaning 'singer', itself rooted in the verb aeidein, 'to sing'. Greek passed the word to Late Latin as melodia, and from there it travelled through Old French as melodie before settling into English in the 1300s. The same Greek aeidein lies behind 'ode', the formal lyric poem, so a melody and an ode are distant cousins in their love of song. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle vowel, written 'o' though it is barely sounded, and the soft final 'dy' that some writers want to spell with a doubled letter.

How the word is built

• melo- (from Greek melos: song, tune)
• -dy (from Greek aoide: song)