palinode

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The Word of the Day for November 21 is:

palinode   \PAL-uh-nohd\   noun 
     1 : an ode or song recanting or retracting something in an earlier poem 
    *2 : a formal retraction

Example sentence:
     Oscar Wilde penned this famous palinode: "Not that I agree with everything 
that I have said in this essay. There is much with which I entirely disagree."

Did you know?
     Does singing someone's praises in a palinode pay off? It did in the case 
of Stesichorus, a Greek poet of the 6th century B.C. According to Plato, old 
Stesichorus was struck blind after writing a poem insulting Helen of Troy, but 
his sight was restored after he wrote an apologetic palinode. That poet was 
only too glad to apply the Greek word "palinoidia" (a compound of "palin," 
meaning "back" or "again," and "aeidein," meaning "to sing"). So were 
16th-century English poets, who borrowed and modified the Greek term to refer 
to odes of their own.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.





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