cantilena

Borrowed from Italian or Latin cantilēna.

• IPA^(key): /kæntɪˈleɪnə/

cantilena (plural cantilenas)

1. (music) A vocal melody or instrumental passage in a smooth, lyrical style.
   • 1964, Anthony Burgess, The Eve of St Venus:

     He played a lazy tune that sinuated from C sharp down to G natural and back again. Astonishing that he could flute so lazy a cantilena while chasing nymphs.

   • 1982, Gene Wolfe, chapter 27, in The Sword of the Lictor (The Book of the New Sun; 3), New York: Timescape, →ISBN, pages 203-204:

     The sounds of insects, of which I am seldom conscious unless I have not heard them in some time, resumed, with a noise that reminded me of the tuning of the strings in the Blue Hall before the first cantilena began, a noise I sometimes used to listen to when I lay on my pallet near the open port of the apprentices' dormitory.

• lancinate

Borrowed from Italian cantilena.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɑntile(ː)nɑ/,
• Rhymes: -enɑ

cantilena

1. cantilena

• IPA^(key): /kan.tiˈlɛ.na/
• Rhymes: -ɛna
• Hyphenation: can‧ti‧lè‧na

Borrowed from Latin cantilēna.

cantilena f (plural cantilene)

1. lullaby

   Synonym: filastrocca

2. singsong
3. whining, cant

• cantilenare

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

cantilena

1. inflection of cantilenare:
   1. third-person singular present indicative
   2. second-person singular imperative

• cilentana, lanciante

From *cantilō +‎ -ēla, the attested cantilō, cantillō being back-formed.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /kan.tiˈleː.na/,
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /kan.tiˈle.na/,

cantilēna f (genitive cantilēnae); first declension

1. old song
2. oft-repeated saying
3. gossip

First-declension noun.

• English: cantilena
• Italian: cantilena
• Portuguese: cantilena
• Sicilian: cantilena
• Spanish: cantilena
• Swedish: cantilena

• “cantilena”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “cantilena”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• cantilena in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• cantilena in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Breyer, Gertrud (1993) Etruskisches Sprachgut im Lateinischen unter Ausschluß des spezifisch onomastischen Bereiches (Orientalia Analecta Lovaniensia; 53), Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oriëntalistiek, →ISBN, page 55

cantilena f (plural cantilenas)

1. (Portugal) Synonym of parlenda

Borrowed from Latin cantilēna.

• IPA^(key): /kantiˈlena/
• Rhymes: -ena
• Syllabification: can‧ti‧le‧na

cantilena f (plural cantilenas)

1. cantilena

• “cantilena”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10