prothalamion

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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After Prothalamion, title of a 16th-century poem by Edmund Spenser, from Ancient Greek πρό (pró, for) + thalamion, as in epithalamion.

Noun

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prothalamion (plural prothalamions or prothalamia)

  1. (literary) A song or poem in honour of a bride and bridegroom about to be married.
    Synonym: epithalamium
    • 2000, Pavan K. Varma, Ghalib: The Man, The Times, Penguin UK, →ISBN:
      Zauq then wrote his own prothalamion in which the last verse (in the same vein as Ghalib's) challenged the ability of those who made a claim to be poets to equal his writing of a sehra. Zauq's prothalamion was given very wide publicity by the professional singers in the palace, and the next day it was published in the local newspaper.

Further reading

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