| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| chorus |
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| SYLLABICATION: | cho·rus |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  kôr  s, k r- |
| NOUN: | Inflected forms: pl. cho·rus·es
1. Music a. A composition usually in four or more parts written for a large number of singers. b. A refrain in which others, such as audience members, join a soloist in a song. c. A line or group of lines repeated at intervals in a song. d. A solo section based on the main melody of a popular song and played by a member of the group. e. A body of singers who perform choral compositions, usually having more than one singer for each part. f. A body of vocalists and dancers who support the soloists and leading performers in operas, musical comedies, and revues. 2a. A group of persons who speak or sing in unison a given part or composition in drama or poetry recitation. b. An actor in Elizabethan drama who recites the prologue and epilogue to a play and sometimes comments on the action. 3a. A group of masked dancers who performed ceremonial songs at religious festivals in early Greek times. b. 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. c. The portion of a classical Greek drama consisting of choric dance and song. 4. A group or performer in a modern drama serving a purpose similar to the Greek chorus. 5. The performers of a choral ode, especially a Pindaric ode. 6a. A speech, song, or other utterance made in concert by many people. b. A simultaneous utterance by a number of people: a chorus of jeers from the bystanders. c. The sounds so made. | | TRANSITIVE & INTRANSITIVE VERB: | Inflected forms: cho·rused or cho·russed, cho·rus·ing or cho·rus·sing, cho·rus·es or cho·rus·ses
To sing or utter in or as if in chorus. | | IDIOM: | in chorus All together; in unison. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Latin, choral dance, from Greek khoros. See gher-1 in Appendix I.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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