dithyramb

Noun

dithyramb (plural dithyrambs)

1. A raucous and ardent choral hymn sung in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus.
   • Now of the numerical constitution of the chorus before Aeschylus we know nothing; but to him, in the Suppliant Maidens at least, it was a happy coincidence that the myth gave to Danaüs fifty daughters, a number exactly equal to that of the chorus of the dithyramb, from which tragedy itself had...1924, Herbert Weir Smyth, “II. The Suppliant Maidens”, in Aeschylean Tragedy, page 51
2. 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.1969, Robert Conquest, “George Orwell”, in Arias from a Love Opera, and Other Poems, Macmillan, page 32
3. 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...1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 25

   Synonyms:

   admonition, condemnation, diatribe, harangue, impugnation, j'accuse, jeremiad, philippic, polemic, rant