antiphony
noun
antiphony is a noun meaning “Alternate, or responsive singing by a choir split into two parts; a piece sung or chanted in this manner” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-N-T-I-P-H-O-N-Y, and it appears about once in every 83 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of antiphony is antiphonies.
What does antiphony mean?
noun
- 1
Alternate, or responsive singing by a choir split into two parts; a piece sung or chanted in this manner.
- 2
Alternate, or responsive ideas or opinions; juxtaposition.
Besides that Cardan pleases himself with that Antiphonie in Nature, that as the Ostrich being a Bird, yet never shes in the Aire, so this Bird of Paradise should alwayes be in the Aire, and never rest upon the Earth.
- 3
Synonym of apophony (“contrastive vowel modification”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of antiphony
- antiphonies plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is antiphony?
Antiphony appears about once in every 83 million words in written English, the 290,185th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Antiphony in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense singing by a choir split in two parts or a piece sung in this manner:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.