fugue - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
fugue (plural fugues)
- (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.
- ✤ Synonym: fuga (dated)
- Anything in literature, poetry, film, painting, etc., that resembles a fugue in structure or in its elaborate complexity and formality.
- ✤ 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.1
- (psychiatry) A fugue state.
Verb
fugue (third-person singular simple present fugues, present participle fuguing, simple past and past participle fugued)
- To improvise, in singing, by introducing vocal ornamentation to fill gaps etc.
- (intransitive) To spend time in a dissociative fugue state.
- ✤ And most of them women, and these only stayed in a fugue state for a relatively short time, like a couple of hours or a couple of days. As far as we know Malenov fugued for close to twenty years.2
- ✤ Fugue states can have phases—it’s possible she fugued from the start, and only woke to what was happening on that bus.3
Etymology
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. Doublet of fuga.
Pronunciation
- (MLE) IPA: /ˈfyɡ/
- IPA: /ˈfjuːɡ/
- Audio (US): 🔊
- Rhymes: -uːɡ
Printed 2026-08-13.
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