epithalamium

• epithalamion

Learned borrowing from Latin epithalamium, itself borrowed from Ancient Greek ἐπιθαλάμιον (epithalámion, “bridal song”), neuter form of ἐπιθαλάμιος (epithalámios), from ἐπί (epí, “upon”) + θάλαμος (thálamos, “inner chamber, wedding chamber”).

• IPA^(key): /ɛpɪθəˈleɪmɪəm/

epithalamium (plural epithalamiums or epithalamia)

1. A song or poem celebrating a marriage.
   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     Softly she laughed and sighed, and swift her glances flew. She shook her heavy tresses, and their perfume filled the place; she struck her little sandalled foot upon the floor, and hummed a snatch of some old Greek epithalamium.

   • 1976, Choice - Volume 13, Issues 8-12, page 1300:

     He has wittily redone a tardy epithalamium and some nursery rhymes ("Three blind eunuchs"), and deftly catches the cozy lawnfuls of plastic dwarfs and flamingos, outside the kenneled people.

2. (Ancient Greece) A song in praise of the bride or bridegroom
   • 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page iii:

     The Caves of Ajanta, the medieval Courts of Love, the epithalamia of the erotic poets [...] all testify to the glorification of manhood, the supremacy of the sex motif.

• epithalamic

• epithalamium on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

From Ancient Greek ἐπιθαλάμιον (epithalámion), neuter form of Ancient Greek ἐπιθαλάμιος (epithalámios), from ἐπί (epí, “upon”) + θάλαμος (thálamos, “inner chamber, wedding chamber”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ɛ.pɪ.tʰaˈɫa.mi.ũː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [e.pi.t̪aˈlaː.mi.um]

epithalamium n (genitive epithalamiī or epithalamī); second declension

1. epithalamium
   • c. 35 CE – 100 CE, Quintilian, The Orator's Education 9.3.16:

     Catullus in epithalamio: dum innupta manet, dum cara suis est

     Catullus [writes] in his epithalamium: While she remains unwed and so long as she remains dear to her own.

Second-declension noun (neuter).

¹Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

• epithalamion

• “epithalamium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• epithalamium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.