Showing results for "coda"

Jump To:

• coda
  coda

  noun

  a more or less independent passage, at the end of a composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close.
• CODA
  CODA

  abbreviation

  child of deaf adultadults: a hearing person with a deaf parent or parents.

SEE ALSO:

Acronyms dictionary results for coda.

coda

¹ American  

[koh-duh] / ˈkoʊ də /

noun

• codas
  plural

1. Music. a more or less independent passage, at the end of a composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close.

2. Ballet. the concluding section of a ballet, especially the final part of a pas de deux.

3. a concluding section or part, especially one of a conventional form and serving as a summation of preceding themes, motifs, etc., as in a work of literature or drama.

4. anything that serves as a concluding part.

5. Phonetics. the segment of a syllable following the nucleus, as the d- sound in good.

---

CODA ² American  

[koh-duh] / ˈkoʊ də /

abbreviation

1. child of deaf adultadults: a hearing person with a deaf parent or parents.

---

coda British  

/ ˈkəʊdə /

noun

1. music the final, sometimes inessential, part of a musical structure

2. a concluding part of a literary work, esp a summary at the end of a novel of further developments in the lives of the characters

---

coda Cultural  

1. An ending to a piece of music, standing outside the formal structure of the piece. Coda is the Italian word for “tail.”

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• codas
  plural

---

Etymology

Origin of coda¹

First recorded in 1745–55; from Italian, from Latin cauda “tail”; cf. queue

Origin of CODA²

First recorded in 1990–95

---

Explanation

A coda is a concluding segment of a piece of music, a dance, or a statement. It's usually short and adds a final embellishment beyond a natural ending point. Like this. Coda comes from the Latin word cauda, meaning "tail," and it's good to think of it as a tail tacked onto something that in and of itself is already a whole. If you tell a story about your crazy experience getting lost in the country and sleeping at a farmer's house, you might add, as a coda, that the farmer ended up visiting you too, a year later.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

coda CODA codas

The Ohio beginning, the championship return, the sentimental comic sans coda.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

The poignant “Time Waits for No One” features one of Taylor’s most beautiful solos, a fitting coda to the end of his five-year career with the Stones.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026

Visitors are left to reconcile a history of gradually expanding rights and liberties with that portentous coda.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026

Before the unfortunate coda to their story, Chapman and her brother seemed to be the perfect example of reconciliation.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 30, 2026

What is the code of normalcy before it becomes corrupted by cancer’s coda?

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

We want to be abundantly clear: The authors of this article are not affiliated with CODA, and their views do not reflect our values.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 20, 2026

Streamers have also gradually gained wider acceptance at the Academy Awards, where Apple won best picture for "CODA" in 2022.

From Barron's ● Dec. 17, 2025

After thinly slicing and staining tissue from 38 normal pancreatic samples onto hundreds of sequential 2D slides, the researchers developed CODA, a machine-learning pipeline, to analyze and reconstruct the slide images into digital 3D images.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 18, 2024

Four of the past five winners of the top PGA trophy went on to win the Academy Award for best picture, including last year's family drama "CODA."

From Reuters ● Feb. 26, 2023

Also joining in the pre-game entertainment just before kickoff was country superstar Chris Stapleton singing "The Star-Spangled Banner," while "CODA" Oscar winner Troy Kotsur interpreted in ASL.

From Salon ● Feb. 14, 2023

Two very quick codas to what you’re saying, Mark.

From Slate ● Dec. 30, 2024

AI-generated codas might only confuse whales, and could potentially spread false information between cetacean species.

From Salon ● Aug. 23, 2024

According to Hal Whitehead, who has pioneered research on social organization and cultural transmission in deep-water whales since the 1970s, researchers began studying sperm whale codas by comparing them to Morse code.

From Salon ● Aug. 23, 2024

Sperm whales communicate through rhythmic patterns of clicks called codas.

From Science Daily ● May 16, 2024

The Coda, from measure 219, is long and, like codas of Beethoven, has features of a second development.

From Music: An Art and a Language by Walter Raymond Spalding

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---

Related Words

• afterword
• postscript
• summation

---