Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A small harmonium.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A reed-organ or harmonium.
Wiktionary
- n. historical, US A music hall.
- n. historical, music A type of reed organ with a single keyboard.
- n. music An accordion where the melody-side keyboard is limited to the notes of diatonic scales in a small number of keys.
GNU Webster's 1913
Etymologies
- From melo- + odeon. (Wiktionary)
- Probably alteration of melodium, from melody. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The scene to be represented is a parlor furnished with sofa, chairs, carpet, pictures, table, and a melodeon, which is placed on the side of the stage.”
“Dancing was tabooed, but a "melodeon" was carted to the dock and hymns were sung.”
“Presently the profound stillness was broken by the harmonium -- "melodeon" is, I believe, the precise name of the instrument -- softly sounding a bar of music.”
“For their second set, they were in novelty mode, tackling Abba, Madness, a-ha and the Carpenters with impressive crooning from Paul Sartin on Close to You, and they ended with melodeon-backed dance tunes, with furious vocals and fiddle-work from Jon Boden on New York Girls.”
“The single fellows had no such doubts (much); beneath me a bunch in slouch hats and jeans were passing the jug around boisterously, and one with a melodeon was striking up:”
“Except for the fiddle at a dance or a melodeon at home, frontier music, in its cultural aspects, was largely confined to amateur bands with plenty of oompah.”
“Ben Ivitsky (viola and guitar), John Boden (fiddle and double bass), and John Spiers (melodeon) complement Carthy's vocals and fiddle perfectly, and the result is Carthy's strongest solo record to date.”
“He evoked the high pulpit with the red plush pillow for the Bible, the stiff pews, the black contribution purses attached to long poles, “the wheezy melodeon in the gallery-front” and the “old maid behind it in severe simplicity of dress,” the choir that raved and roared around its “victim” the hymn, “& pulled & hauled & flayed it.””
“He later entertainingly disgorged his visual and aural memories of it all—the high pulpit with the red plush pillow for the Bible, the stiff wooden pews, the “melodeon,” or primitive organ; the caterwauling choir, the dozing oldsters, and his scattered fellow captives, the other boys, their spitballs at the ready, grateful for the diversion of a dog sitting down on the stinging warhead of a pinch bug—and getting up again.”
“Lionel Leopold dear Henry Flower earnestly Mr Leopold Bloom envisaged battered candlesticks melodeon oozing maggoty blowbags.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘melodeon’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Accordions, et al
Words or phrases associated with the accordion and its family—free reed aerophones. And, please, wisecracks.
bellows, squeeze, aerophone, bayan, concertina, squeeze box, stomach steinway, windjammer, ship's piano, belly organ, pleated piano, waistline wurlitzer and 25 more...
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This week's words
hand-handled, crouch, hootchy-kootchy, gloriole, glory hole, metempsychosis, doctrinaire, transmigration, celestial, treetop, luxuriant, physic and 102 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, M
metamerism, malady, margin, marauder, maverick, mercury, mirth, mandible, macerate, meteor, manumission, mica and 292 more...
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The Innocents Abroad
Words rounded up while reading The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain.
rakish, excursionist, bowelless, pilgrimizing, melodeon, woebegone, abaft, sextant, veriest, behindhand, stanchion, avast and 188 more...
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Words of Whimsy & Grace
abecedary, addendum, ampersand, anachronism, avuncular, balderdash, barnacle, befuddle, behemoth, bejeebers, blabbermouth, blatherskite and 465 more...
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jameslong's Words
tergiversate, ossify, syncretic, agenbite, enwit, doxy, borborygm, pulchritudinous, oxters, fervid, banal, asinine and 102 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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Clearinghouse
For stuff to simply reside.
calcar, pinion, espadrille, antipodes, peregrine, cormorant, tanager, vireo, farrago, undervest, passerine, oscine and 881 more...
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Non-vital organs
concertina, pipe organ, calliope, harmonium, accordion, reed organ, melodicon, hydraulicon, euphoniad, orchestrion, barrel organ, wurlitzer and 31 more...
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interesting
lesser known, interesting words.
hiraeth, melodeon, bedizen, maudlin, noctuary, peripeteia, phosphene, celadon, aeolist, cislunar, etiolation, pareidolia and 20 more...
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simple & useful11
solemnity, accursed, commandeer, harmonium, melodeon, harp on, goggle eyed, slavishly, unmasking, trawling, compendium, impermanence and 64 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for melodeon.
knitandpurl "The living room was full of things: tables, and lots of chairs, all with crocheted antimacassars; pictures and pennants and fans on the wall; a big melodeon at one end of the room with very old sheet music on it; and in the wide doorway there were portieres all made of beads which rattled like rain on a tin roof when Mrs. Wheelwright brushed against them."
The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, p 56 of the 2002 hardcover edition Jul 6, 2011