Tetrachordon

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A stringed instrument or tuning arrangement built around four strings or a four-note musical unit ; a famous Miltonic pamphlet title tied to arguments about divorce
2. An ancient four-stringed instrument or scale pattern based on four notes ; the name John Milton gave to his tract defending divorce on biblical grounds
3. A four-string musical device or a four-note scale segment ; the title of a seventeenth-century treatise by Milton that argues for the right to divorce

Etymology: John Milton coined this word as the title of his treatise on divorce. Drawing on the Greek "tetrachordon," meaning "four-stringed," he suggested that four passages of Scripture on marriage should be tuned together like the strings of a lyre so that they sound in harmony rather than discord. Before Milton, it was not a term in general use. The Greek parts are "tetra," meaning four, and "chordē," a string originally made of gut. That Greek root also lies behind the English "chord," which came through Latin "chorda." The English "cord," a rope or string, is a doublet of "chord," having reached English by a different route through Old French, so the musical term and the everyday word share an ancestor.