Word.ws English Dictionary

melismata

melismata is the plural 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

Words formed from melismata

Questions about melismata

What is melismata the plural of?
Melismata is the plural of melisma.

Words near melismata in the dictionary

  1. melipramine
  2. Melisha
  3. melism
  4. melisma
  5. melismas
  6. melismata
  7. melismatic
  8. melismatically
  9. melismatics
  10. melisms
  11. meliss-

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: melismata (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: “melismata.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/melismata. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.