Word.ws English Dictionary

melism

melism is the alternative form of melisma.

Meaning of melisma

Noun

melisma (countable and uncountable, plural melismas or melismata)

  1. (countable) A passage of several notes sung to one syllable of text.
    • A choir sang one of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. The mournful melisma accompanied the slow procession to the palace built by Herod the Great, at present untenanted.1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked
  2. (uncountable) The use of such passages.
    • A subsequent generation of singers, including Ms. Aguilera, Jennifer Hudson and Beyoncé, built their careers around melisma.2010 December 24, David Browne, “Trilling Songbirds Clip Their Wings”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Forms of melism

pluralmelisms

Questions about melism

What is melism the alternative form of?
Melism is the alternative form of melisma.

Words near melism in the dictionary

  1. meliponids
  2. meliponine
  3. meliponines
  4. melipramine
  5. Melisha
  6. melism
  7. melisma
  8. melismas
  9. melismata
  10. melismatic
  11. melismatically

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: melism (page history and authors); melisma (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.

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Cite this entry: “melism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/melism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.