dithyramb

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.[1] Brandenstein also compares Sanskrit अङ्ग (aṅga, “member”).[2]

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɪθ.ɪ.ɹæm/

dithyramb (plural dithyrambs)

1. A raucous and ardent choral hymn sung in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus.
2. A poem or oration in the same style.
   • 1969, Robert Conquest, “George Orwell”, in Arias from a Love Opera, and Other Poems, Macmillan, page 32:

     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.

3. An impassioned speech; a rant.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:diatribe

   • 1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 25:

     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.