chorus

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Music A composition usually in four or more parts written for a large number of singers.
2. n. Music A refrain in which others, such as audience members, join a soloist in a song.
3. n. Music A line or group of lines repeated at intervals in a song.
4. n. Music A solo section based on the main melody of a popular song and played by a member of the group.
5. n. Music A body of singers who perform choral compositions, usually having more than one singer for each part.
6. n. Music A body of vocalists and dancers who support the soloists and leading performers in operas, musical comedies, and revues.
7. n. A group of persons who speak or sing in unison a given part or composition in drama or poetry recitation.
8. n. An actor in Elizabethan drama who recites the prologue and epilogue to a play and sometimes comments on the action.
9. n. A group of masked dancers who performed ceremonial songs at religious festivals in early Greek times.
10. n. The group in a classical Greek drama whose songs and dances present an exposition of or, in later tradition, a disengaged commentary on the action.
11. n. The portion of a classical Greek drama consisting of choric dance and song.
12. n. A group or performer in a modern drama serving a purpose similar to the Greek chorus.
13. n. The performers of a choral ode, especially a Pindaric ode.
14. n. A speech, song, or other utterance made in concert by many people.
15. n. A simultaneous utterance by a number of people: a chorus of jeers from the bystanders.
16. n. The sounds so made.
17. v. To sing or utter in or as if in chorus.
18. idiom. in chorus All together; in unison.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A dance. Specifically, in the ancient Greek drama— A dance performed by a number of persons in a ring, in honor of Bacchus, accompanied by the singing of the sacred dithyrambic odes. From this simple rite was developed the Greek drama, In continuation of the early tradition, a company of persons, represented as of age, sex, and estate appropriate to the play, who took part through their leader, the coryphæus, with the actors in the dialogue of a drama, and sang their sentiments at stated intervals when no actor was on the stage. The chorus occupied in the theater a position between the stage and the auditorium, and moved or danced in appropriate rhythm around the sacred thymele or altar of Bacchus, which stood in the middle of the area allotted to the chorus. See theater.
2. n. One of the songs executed by the chorus.
3. n. In music: A company of singers, especially an organized company, such as singers in a church or a choral society, In an oratorio, opera, or concert, the general company of singers, as distinguished from the soloists, A part of a song in which the listeners join with the singer; a refrain; also, any recurring refrain or burden, A musical composition intended to be sung in harmony by a company of singers, usually by four voices. A double chorus is for eight voices, The compound or mixture stops of an organ. In the tenth century, an instrument, probably the bagpipe, In the fifteenth century, the drone of a bagpipe or of the accompaniment strings of the crowd. Formerly, in Scotland, a loud trumpet.
4. n. A union of voices or sounds, or a company of persons, resembling a chorus.
5. n. In zoology, a genus of mollusks.
6. To sing or join in the chorus of: as, to chorus a song.
7. To exclaim or call out in concert.

Wiktionary

1. n. A group of singers and dancers in the religious festivals of ancient Greece
2. n. A group of people in a play or performance who recite together.
3. n. A group of singers; singing group who perform together.
4. n. A repeated part of a song, also called the refrain.
5. n. A setting or feature in electronic music that makes one voice sound like many.
6. n. figuratively A group of people or animals who make sounds together
7. n. theater An actor who reads the opening and closing lines of a play.
8. v. To echo a particular sentiment.
9. v. To sing the chorus.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Antiq.) A band of singers and dancers.
2. n. (Gr. Drama) A company of persons supposed to behold what passed in the acts of a tragedy, and to sing the sentiments which the events suggested in couplets or verses between the acts; also, that which was thus sung by the chorus.
3. n. obsolete An interpreter in a dumb show or play.
4. n. (Mus.) A company of singers singing in concert.
5. n. (Mus.) A composition of two or more parts, each of which is intended to be sung by a number of voices.
6. n. (Mus.) Parts of a song or hymn recurring at intervals, as at the end of stanzas; also, a company of singers who join with the singer or choir in singer or choir in singing such parts.
7. n. The simultaneous of a company in any noisy demonstration.
8. v. To sing in chorus; to exclaim simultaneously.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. utter in unison
2. n. any utterance produced simultaneously by a group
3. n. the part of a song where a soloist is joined by a group of singers
4. n. a group of people assembled to sing together
5. v. sing in a choir
6. n. a company of actors who comment (by speaking or singing in unison) on the action in a classical Greek play
7. n. a body of dancers or singers who perform together