epithalamium

Noun

epithalamium (plural epithalamiums or epithalamia)

1. A song or poem celebrating a marriage.
   • Softly she laughed and sighed, and swift her glances flew. She shook her heavy tresses, and their perfume filled the place; she struck her little sandalled foot upon the floor, and hummed a snatch of some old Greek epithalamium.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
   • He has wittily redone a tardy epithalamium and some nursery rhymes ("Three blind eunuchs"), and deftly catches the cozy lawnfuls of plastic dwarfs and flamingos, outside the kenneled people.1976, Choice - Volume 13, Issues 8-12, page 1300
2. (Ancient Greece) A song in praise of the bride or bridegroom
   • The Caves of Ajanta, the medieval Courts of Love, the epithalamia of the erotic poets [...] all testify to the glorification of manhood, the supremacy of the sex motif.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page iii