Coda

Quick meaning: Coda is a noun meaning (music) A passage that brings a movement or piece to a conclusion through prolongation.

Meaning

(music) A passage that brings a movement or piece to a conclusion through prolongation.

More Meanings

1. (phonology) The optional final sound of a syllable or word, occurring after its nucleus and usually composed of one or more consonants.
2. (figurative) A conclusion (of a statement or event, for example), final portion, tail end.
3. A series of clicks used by sperm whales for communicating with each other.
4. (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.

Example Sentences

The word “salts” has three consonants — /l/, /t/, and /s/ — in its coda, whereas the word “glee” has no coda at all.

Downstairs, a little later, in the drawing room, the coda of the party was unwinding, and Gerald opening new bottles of champagne as though he made no distinction between the boring drunks who "sat," and the knowing few of the inner circle, gathered round the empty marble fireplace.

Redundancies accounted for a smaller proportion of the change, although no less significant to those affected. Rail News, BR's staff magazine, included a coda to its August 1964 assessment of the Beeching cuts: "For the individuals involved it is a worrying time [...] Rail News feels deeply for those affected and expresses the sympathy of its readers with them."

In classical music there are, as the analytical programs tell us, first subjects and second subjects, free fantasias, recapitulations, and codas; there are fugues, with counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal points; there are passacaglias on ground basses, canons ad hypodiapente, and other ingenuities, which have, after all, stood or fallen by their prettiness as much as the simplest folk-tune.

Word Forms

• codas

Synonyms for coda

Depending on context, synonyms include finale, auslaut.

Antonyms for coda

Common opposites include anlaut, onset.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include finale, epilog, code, end, codetta, cadence.

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