fugue

Borrowed from French fugue, from Italian fuga (“flight, ardor”), from Latin fuga (“act of fleeing”), from fugiō (“to flee”); compare Ancient Greek φυγή (phugḗ). Apparently from the metaphor that the first part starts alone on its course, and is pursued by later parts.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfjuːɡ/

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• Rhymes: -uːɡ

fugue (plural fugues)

1. (music) A contrapuntal piece of music wherein a particular melody is played in a number of voices, each voice introduced in turn by playing the melody.
2. Anything in literature, poetry, film, painting, etc., that resembles a fugue in structure or in its elaborate complexity and formality.
   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 175:

     Jacobsen's theory about the empty storehouse is still valid, for a myth never has one meaning only; a myth is a polyphonic fugue of many voices.

3. A fugue state.

• fuguist

• fugacious
• fugue state

fugue (third-person singular simple present fugues, present participle fuguing, simple past and past participle fugued)

1. To improvise, in singing, by introducing vocal ornamentation to fill gaps etc.

• Wikipedia article on fugues

• IPA^(key): /fyɡ/[1]

fugue f (plural fugues, diminutive fugueje n)

1. (medicine) a fugue state

• dissociatieve fugue

• IPA^(key): /fyɡ/
• Homophones: fuguent, fugues

Inflected forms of fuguer.

fugue

1. inflection of fuguer:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

Borrowed from Latin fuga. Doublet of fougue.

fugue f (plural fugues)

1. (informal) running away (from a place where one was staying)
2. (music) fugue

• (running away): fuite : flight, fleeing

• fuguer

• fuir

• → English: fugue

• “fugue”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

fugue

1. inflection of fugar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative