Other forms: psalms
A psalm is a sacred song from the Hebrew scriptures. Sing a psalm, the twenty-third psalm, a psalm of David.
There are a hundred and fifty in the book, and they were written to be sung to a stringed instrument, which is what the Greek name says. The twenty-third is the one most people can half quote, and psalms are still central to daily worship in several traditions.
1nounpsalmA sacred song from the Hebrew scriptures.
“The choir sang a psalm at the start of the church service.”
psalm is a song.
Greek psalmos means a song sung to a harp, from psallein, to pluck a string.
Ancient Greek
ψαλμός — the sound emanating from twitching or twanging perhaps with the hands or fingers, mostly of musical strings
Latin
psalmus
Old French
psalme
Old English
psealm
Middle English
salm
English, today
psalm
Built from
From Middle English salm or psalme, from Old English psealm, later reinforced from Old French psalme (modern French psaume), both from Latin psalmus, from Ancient Greek ψαλμός (“the sound emanating from twitching or twanging perhaps with the hands or fingers, mostly of musical strings”) (from ψάλλω (“to make a sound by striking, touching, plucking, rubbing, twanging, or vibrating”)), but later in New Testament times the meaning of ψαλμός evolved from its Classical meaning of "a tune played to the harp" to a more general tune that could be played with any instrument; even a song sung with or without musical accompaniment. By the Byzantine Period, it lost all of its instrumental nuances.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA