hymn

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English ymne, also hympne,^[2][3][4] partly inherited from Old English ymen, also hymen,^[5][6][2] borrowed from Latin hymnus (“song of praise”), and partly borrowed from Old French ymne, from Medieval Latin ymnus, from the same Latin word.^[6][2][7][4] The Latin noun is from Ancient Greek ὕμνος (húmnos, “song or ode in praise of gods or heroes”),^[5][7][8] which the Septuagint used to translate several Hebrew words for a song praising God; from there it passed into the New Testament and the Latin Vulgate.^{[5][7][9][10]} The Middle English forms were often reshaped after contemporary Latin ympnus and hympnus, and finally after classical Latin as the spelling hymn,^[5] a 16th-century Latinized spelling;^[8] Barnhart first finds the form hymn in 1613, in “Purchas his Pilgrimage”.^[6] The Anglo-Norman word is recorded from the early 12th century.^[11] The origin of the Greek word is uncertain: it may be a variant of the Greek word for a wedding song, from Hymen, the Greek god of marriage,^[7][6][12] or, according to Watkins, from a root Proto-Indo-European *sam- (“to sing”), also the source of Hittite išhamai (“he sings”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A song of praise to God, in the Old English Vespasian Psalter, before 830.^[6][5] The Middle English ymne is first recorded probably before 1200, in the Ancrene Riwle.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The Greek word celebrated heroes as well as gods, but it was the Septuagint's sense, a song praising God, that came into English through Latin and French.^[8][5] The wider sense of an ode in honour of a god, a country or the like returns in English in 1513, in Gavin Douglas's translation of Virgil's Aeneid.^[5][13] The verb, to praise in song, was formed from the noun in 1667, in Milton's Paradise Lost.^[5][6][2] The final -n has long been silent: the OED's earliest evidence is Palsgrave's spelling imme,^[5] Etymonline dates it to at least 1530,^[7] and Barnhart points to Middle English hym before 1425;^[6] the n is still heard in hymnal and hymnody.^[6] Johnson (1755) defined a hymn as a song of adoration to some superior being.^[14]

Timeline

• before 830 – Old English ymen, a song of praise to God, in the Vespasian Psalter.^[6][5]
• before 1200 – Middle English ymne, in the Ancrene Riwle.^[6]
• 1513 – a song in honour of a god, a country, etc.^[5]
• 1613 – the spelling hymn.^[6]
• 1667 – verb, to praise in song, in Milton.^[5][2]
• 1720 – verb, to sing hymns.^[5]
• 1727 – verb, to express in a hymn.^[5]
• 1915 – the anti-British Hassgesang of Ernst Lissauer, called the Hymn of Hate.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A song of praise to God, especially a metrical one sung by a congregation during a religious service.^[2][13][5]
2. A song or ode praising another god, a hero, a nation or something else: a hymn to liberty.^[13][5]

Verb

1. To praise or worship in song.^[2][5][13]
2. To sing hymns.^[2][5]
3. To express praise or thanks by singing a hymn.^[13][5]

Word family

• hymnlike
• hymnist
• hymnal
• hymnbook
• hymnody
• hymnology

Related words

• hymen
• hymeneal
• Polyhymnia

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
12. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.