Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Music The concluding passage of a movement or composition.
- n. A conclusion or closing part of a statement.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In music: The tail or stem of a note.
- n. A passage added to a composition for the purpose of bringing it to a complete close: it is especially important in works that are constructed in canon, rondo, or sonata form.
Wiktionary
- n. music A passage which brings a movement or piece to a conclusion through prolongation.
- n. linguistics The optional final part of a syllable, placed after its nucleus, and usually composed of one or more consonants.
- n. geology In seismograms, the gradual return to baseline after a seismic event. The length of the coda can be used to estimate event magnitude, and the shape sometimes reveals details of subsurface structures.
- n. The conclusion of a statement.
- n. alternative spelling of CODA.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Mus.) A few measures added beyond the natural termination of a composition.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the closing section of a musical composition
Etymologies
- From Italian coda (Wiktionary)
- Italian, from Latin cauda, tail. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“There's a scene in what we call the coda, where he comes out in a diagonal - a shooting diagonal, begging - doing these things called brisé.”
“A tragic coda is that although Saro-Wiwa was widely admired in the West, the oil-dependent democracies that profess their devotion to human rights did little to save him.”
“The coda is perfect, switching between the main lip-syncher and the crowds XD”
“Yet the experience of watching this intentionally incongruous coda is excruciating, and to no defensible effect beyond a shrug of the shoulders and an acknowledgement that literalizing the metaphysical is not Fassbinder's forte.”
“The coda is rather amazing: a silent (music but no dialog) series of scenes that build into perhaps the best example I've seen of why the secular is preferable to the religious, ending with a quietly inclusive moment of sheer, sweet perfection.”
“Rob: How do you explain the free variation of glottalization -- a marked feature -- in English coda stops?”
Winter's Law in Balto-Slavic, "Hybrid Theory" and phonation - Part 2
“How do you explain the free variation of glottalization -- a marked feature -- in English coda stops?”
Winter's Law in Balto-Slavic, "Hybrid Theory" and phonation - Part 2
“Until the coda, that is, when Mr. Nelson's inimitable tenor takes over, and the prim cablevision audience erupts.”
“And finally, they're surprised by the coda, which is a personal coda, and well, I won't tell people what's in the coda, but people are astonished and taken by it.”
“The coda is the sense of well-being that floods the body after coffee is swallowed:”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘coda’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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MUSIC - ALL TERMS
With focus on non-classical styles, but not excluding terms of the latter.
banjo, accompaniment, acoustic bass, bass guitar, bass clef, ground, brass, cornet, Mute, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, arrangement and 866 more...
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March 2012
panache, evanescent, erogenous, vestibule, malfeasance, lacuna, blithering, incubate, breech, tabernacle, pearly, upholstery and 79 more...
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Key
clef, coda, notch, keys, vent, bis, the key, chord, sense, cllee, flame, eden
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thing
apron, lard, clove, camphor, alfalfa, amber, caraway, juniper, kohl, lute, shale, glyph and 142 more...
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End of story
cloture, closure, guillotine, epilogue, denouement, ultimate, eschaton, coda, finale, happily ever after
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Really Cool Four-Letter Words
I marvel at the amazing variety of four-letter words in the English language. And that's not even counting really common (to me) words like fuck.
ibis, pelf, sofa, iota, oboe, lava, icon, sped, puha, pulp, puma, kyat and 150 more...
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Learned
ambergris, andiron, aphelion, austral, bellicose, boreal, bravura, chaff, chicanery, creditable, credulous, decamp and 223 more...
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bintalshamsa's list
My Favorite Words
weltschmerz, perspicacity, idée fixe, invigilator, salubrious, tchotchke, ex nihilo, invidious, malapropism, naïve, sardonic, elide and 1459 more...
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jagosaurus's favorites
Words I like mostly because of the way they sound and feel.
ticonderoga, petulance, snark, estimable, chickahominy, feline, gezellig, gneiss, shit, willy-nilly, shelter, coda and 366 more...
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List Erine
cool mint antiseptic
shalom, cattywampus, bourgeoisie, aerophile, traverse, grotto, epicurean, ex cathedra, nautilus, epitaph, lathe, continuum and 753 more...
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Manji's Random Wordlist
The title says it all
velour, vivacity, subterfuge, sable, divination, gentry, vindication, compendium, pistons, metamorphosis, methodology, polyphony and 91 more...
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AbraxasZugzwang's Words
atavism, abraxas, sisyphean, frust, fetus-in-fetu, arhythmically, queef, epidemiology, abecedarian, troglodyte, chiaroscuro, philology and 631 more...
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Revised GRE Wordlist_2013
Vocabulary building for my quest of GRE 2013
ephemeral, esoteric, rhetoric, censure, egregious, pittance, dupe, mulct, paucity, alacrity, maintain, laconic and 1008 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for coda.

chained_bear "Females tend to employ a Morse code-like series of clicks, known as a coda, and male sperm whales make slower, louder clicks called clangs."
--Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, 87 May 1, 2008