: a joyous song or hymn of praise, tribute, thanksgiving, or triumph
unite their voices in a great paean to liberty—Edward Sackville-West
2
: a work that praises or honors its subject : encomium, tribute
wrote a paean to the queen on her 50th birthday
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According to the poet Homer, the Greek god Apollo sometimes took the guise of Paean, physician to the gods. The earliest musical paeans were hymns of thanksgiving and praise that were dedicated to Apollo. They were sung at events ranging from boisterous festivals to public funerals, and they were the traditional marching songs of armies heading into battle. Over time, the word became generalized, and it is now used for any kind of tribute.
his retirement party featured many paeans for his long years of service to the company
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For three-quarters of its pages, the book reads like a paean to dope, a lyrical testament to the transcendent bliss of the first time using, and to the futile effort to recapture it.—Scott Stossel, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2025 Through their on-camera interviews, passion and reverence for cinema comes clearly through, making the film a touching paean to the power of the artform and the people behind it.—Murtada Elfadl, Variety, 7 Sep. 2025 The Brutalist, for all its idiosyncrasies, was a fairly conventional Oscar player—a classically structured paean to a great man.—Radhika Seth, Vogue, 1 Sep. 2025 Witkoff, a real-estate lawyer by training whose apprenticeship in diplomacy has so far produced neither peace in Gaza nor an end to the war in Ukraine, offered a rousing paean to the boss.—Susan B. Glasser, New Yorker, 28 Aug. 2025 See All Example Sentences for paean
Word History
Etymology
Latin, hymn of thanksgiving especially addressed to Apollo, from Greek paian, paiōn, from Paian, Paiōn, epithet of Apollo in the hymn
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