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. Doublet of fuga.

• (MLE) IPA^(key): /ˈfyɡ/
• IPA^(key): /ˈfjuːɡ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• 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.

   Synonym: fuga (dated)

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. (psychiatry) A fugue state.

• 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.
2. (intransitive) To spend time in a dissociative fugue state.
   • 2014, Richard D. Dalrymple, Fugue, page 33:

     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.

   • 2021, Robin Wasserman, Mother Daughter Widow Wife, page 87:

     Fugue states can have phases—it's possible she fugued from the start, and only woke to what was happening on that bus.

• fugue on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• IPA^(key): /fyk/^[1]

fugue f (plural fugues, diminutive fugueje n)

1. (medicine) a fugue state

• dissociatieve fugue

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

Ca. 1600, borrowed in the musical sense from Italian fuga, itself a borrowing from Latin fuga. Doublet of fougue (from the inherited Italian cognate). The sense “flight” (18th c.) may be a new borrowing from the Italian.

fugue f (plural fugues)

1. (music) fugue
2. (informal) flight, act of running away, especially from home, elopement

   Synonym: fuite

• fuir

• → English: fugue
• → Persian: فوگ (fug)
• → Turkish: füg

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

fugue

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

• “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