Etymologically
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hymn

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Pronunciation

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
  • 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.