Hypodorian

Part of speech: adjective, noun

Definitions

1. A plagal musical mode in medieval church music, whose range lies below the Dorian mode and whose final note is D
2. A medieval ecclesiastical mode in which the melody ranges beneath the Dorian pitch set and rests on the note D
3. The plagal form of the Dorian mode in plainchant and early Western music, centered on D and spanning the octave below it

Etymology: "Hypodorian" is a music-theory term, and its history is a matter of Greek prefixes attached to an ancient musical name. The "hypo-" is the Greek prefix meaning "under" or "below," and it is joined to "Dorian," the name of one of the ancient Greek musical modes, traditionally associated with the Dorian people of Greece. Dorian itself names a scale pattern, and the prefix signals that this is the variant sitting a fourth below that pattern's standard form. The prefix does most of the work here. Medieval theorists who revived the old Greek modal names used "hypo-" to mark a companion mode whose range lay beneath its partner, so the pairing of "Dorian" with "hypodorian" reflects that older system of paired modes. The result is a compound built from familiar Greek parts rather than a word with a dramatic shift in meaning.