alleluia
alleluia interjection: a liturgical or variant form of hallelujah. Also the alternative spelling of hallelujah.
Interjection
- A liturgical or variant form of hallelujah.
Noun
alleluia (plural alleluias)
- A liturgical form of hallelujah.
- A choral composition incorporating alleluia in its text.
- Down at the corner, carols bugled steamily from a mission soup-kitchen. There's no escape from it, he thought. Turn on the radio, and its alleluia licks you with tremolo tongue.1953 December, Hortense Calisher, “A Christmas Carillon: A Story”, in John Fischer, editor, Harper’s Magazine, volume 207, number 1243, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 38...
- The plant wood sorrel.
Also used as
alleluia is also the alternative spelling of hallelujah.
Forms of alleluia
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | alleluias |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | alleluias |
| present participle | alleluiaing |
| past participle | alleluiaed |
| past | alleluiaed |
Origin of alleluia
Learned borrowing from Latin allēlūia, borrowed from Ancient Greek ἀλληλούϊα (allēloúïa), borrowed from Biblical Hebrew הַלְּלוּיָהּ (halləlūyɔh, “praise the Lord”), from הַלְּלוּ (halləlū, “praise!”) + יָהּ (yɔh, “Lord, Jah”).
Questions about alleluia
- What does alleluia mean?
- Alleluia means a liturgical or variant form of hallelujah.
- What part of speech is alleluia?
- Alleluia can be an interjection or a noun.
Words near alleluia in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: alleluia (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-alleluia.wav.
Cite this entry: “alleluia.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/alleluia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.