Other forms: chords
A chord is several musical notes sounded together. Play a chord, a minor chord, three chords.
Three notes is the usual minimum, and which three decides whether it sounds happy or sad — a major and a minor chord differ by one note moved a semitone. Strike a chord means to resonate with somebody. The h was added later, from the Greek for a string.
1nounchordSeveral musical notes sounded together.
“He learned three chords on the guitar and started writing songs.”
chord is a group of notes.
A variant of cord, respelt after Latin chorda and Greek chorde, the string of a lyre. The spelling changed but the sense came from the strings sounding together.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵʰerH-
Ancient Greek
χορδή — string of gut, the string of a lyre
English, today
chord
Variant of a doublet of cord, with spelling alteration due to Latin chorda (“cord”), ultimately from Ancient Greek χορδή (“string of gut, the string of a lyre”). No relation to French accord (“chord”) and its derivations. a doublet of cuerda.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA