fugue

Etymology

It was first written fuge,^[2][3][4] and most dictionaries take it as borrowed from Italian fuga (“fugue; literally flight”),^[2][3][4][5] with the modern spelling from French fugue, itself from the Italian word.^[2][3][4] The OED instead derives the English word from the French one,^[6][7] and Hoad and the Shorter Oxford leave the choice open between French and Italian.^[8][9] The Italian word comes from Latin fuga (“flight, a running away”),^[6][3][2] from fugiō (“to flee”),^[3][9][4] from Proto-Indo-European *bheug- (“to flee”).^[3] Middle English fuge (“flight”), recorded before 1450, came directly from Latin and influenced the musical term only indirectly.^[2][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

A musical composition built on short interwoven themes: 1597, in Morley's Plaine & Easie Introduction to Musicke, spelled fuge.^[6][2][4]

Semantic evolution

The name describes how the music moves: Ebenezer Prout explained in 1891 that "one part starts on its course alone, and that those which enter later are pursuing it".^[3] The spelling fugue is first recorded in Milton's Paradise Lost (1667).^[2][3] Johnson (1755) defined it as a point of several notes begun by one part and then taken up by the others,^[11] and Webster (1828) called it "a chase or succession in the parts".^[12] The dictionaries date the rare verb differently: the late 17th century in the Shorter Oxford,^[9] 1755 in Merriam-Webster Unabridged,^[4] and 1783, in Beckford, in the OED.^[6] In psychiatry the word has named a flight from one's own identity since the early 20th century: the OED's first record is C. R. Corson's 1901 translation of P. M. Janet,^[6] and Weekley noted in February 1919 that the word was now also used of loss of memory, as mental fugue.^[13]

Timeline

• before 1450 – fuge, flight, directly from Latin.^[2][10]
• 1597 – fuge, a polyphonic composition on short subjects or themes.^[6][2][4]
• 1667 – the spelling fugue, in Milton's Paradise Lost.^[2]
• 1783 – verb, to compose or perform a fugue.^[6] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the verb to 1755.^[4]
• 1901 – in psychiatry, a flight from one's own identity, also in fugue state.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A polyphonic musical composition in which a short theme stated by one voice or part is taken up in turn by the others and developed through counterpoint: The organist closed the service with a fugue in D minor.^[7][4][9]
2. A section of a larger composition written in the manner of such a piece.^[4]
3. (psychiatry) A dreamlike state, lasting hours or days, in which people lose awareness of their identity and past and often wander from home.^[7][6][9]

Verb

1. (archaic) To compose or perform a fugue.^[4][6][9]

Word family

• fugal
• fugally
• fuguist
• fuguelike
• double fugue

Related words

• fugacious
• fugitive
• refuge
• refugee

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ Webster, Noah (1828), An American Dictionary of the English Language, New York: S. Converse
13. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray