Also 7–8 episod. [a. Gr. ἐπεισόδ-ιον, neut. of ἐπεισόδ-ιος coming in besides, f. ἐπί in addition + εἴσοδος entering, f. εἰς into + ὁδός way. Cf. Fr. épisode.]
1. In the Old Greek Tragedy, the interlocutory parts between two choric songs, because these were originally interpolations.
1678. T. Rymer, Trag. Last Age, 12. Thespis introduc’d the Episods, and brought an Actor on the stage.
1762. J. Brown, Poetry & Mus., iv. (1763), 42. Not only the Part of the tragic Choir, but the Episode or interlocutory Part would be also sung.
a. 1789. Burney, Hist. Mus. (ed. 2), I. viii. 146. The custom of setting the Episodes as the acts of a play.
2. An incidental narrative or digression in a poem, story, etc., separable from the main subject, yet arising naturally from it.
1679. Dryden, Dram. Wks., 369. The happy Episode of Theseus and Dirce.
1780. Jas. Harris, Wks. (1841), 423. The dry didactic character of the Georgics [of Virgil] made it necessary they should be enlivened by episodes and digressions.
1839. Thirlwall, Greece, II. 183. Herodotus introduces an episode, which … seems … at first sight strangely misplaced.
1865. Tylor, Early Hist. Man., i. 11. Familiar episodes, belonging to the mediæval ‘Reynard the Fox.’
3. transf. An incidental ‘passage’ in a person’s life, in the history of a country, the world, an institution, etc.
1773. Goldsm., Stoops to Conq., II. i. The terrors of a formal courtship, together with the episode of aunts, grandmothers and cousins.
1818. Cobbett, Pol. Reg., XXXIII. 100. To answer … a hundred letters in a week, by way of episode in your other labours.
1875. Lyell, Princ. Geol. (ed. 10), I. I. x. 203. Like the Glacial episode before mentioned.
1855. Milman, Lat. Chr. (1864), V. IX. vii. 368. The conquest of Constantinople by the Latins, that strange and romantic episode in the history of the Crusades.
4. Mus. (See quot.)
1869. Ouseley, Counterp., xxii. 169. In ordinary fugues … it is usual to allow a certain number of bars to intervene from time to time,… after which the subject is resumed…. The intervening bars thus introduced are called episodes.
