Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In the ancient Roman drama, any passage sung by the actors; especially, in comedy, a solo accompanied by dancing and music.
  • noun [LL.] A canticle.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Greek comic poets also, interposing the canticum sung by the chorus, divided the spaces of their plays.

    Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008

  • - Cantate Domino canticum novum: quia mirabilia fecit.

    Archive 2008-08-01 bls 2008

  • - Cantate Domino canticum novum: quia mirabilia fecit.

    August 15: Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Part II bls 2008

  • Then came the first canticum, a glorious tenor aria sung to the accompaniment of a lyre.

    The Grass Crown McCullough, Colleen, 1937- 1991

  • Only by deciphering the imprint left by God on the world can we raise ourselves to the transcendent, invisible world; for God has so ordered his creation, has so linked the lower to the higher by subtle signatures and affinities, that the world we see is, as it were, a great staircase by which the mind of man must climb upwards to spiritual intelli - gence (In canticum canticorum 3).

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas ARMAND MAURER 1968

  • Iambic senarii were spoken; other metres were sung; but the scenes in septenarii stood midway between the dialogue and the _canticum_.

    The Student's Companion to Latin Authors Thomas Ross Mills

  • '_Quomodo cantabimus canticum Domini in terra aliena?

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862 Various

  • We may well imagine that such scenes were preceded as well as accompanied by a fearful racket within (a familiar device of our low comedy and extravaganza), the effect probably heightened by tempestuous _melodrama_ on the _tibiae_, as both the scenes cited are in _canticum_.

    The Dramatic Values in Plautus Wilton Wallace Blanck�� 1916

  • Note that this is _canticum_ and the effect of the two "sing-songing" slaves on the audience must have been much the same as, upon us, the spectacle of a vaudeville "duo," entering from opposite wings and singing perchance a burlesque of grand opera at each other.

    The Dramatic Values in Plautus Wilton Wallace Blanck�� 1916

  • The comparison is the more apt, as about two-thirds of the illustrative scenes referred to in the next paragraph are in _canticum_.

    The Dramatic Values in Plautus Wilton Wallace Blanck�� 1916

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