Borrowed fromFrenchfugue, fromItalianfuga(“flight, ardor”), fromLatinfuga(“act of fleeing”), fromfugiō(“to flee”); compareAncient Greekφυγή(phugḗ). Apparently from the metaphor that the first part starts alone on its course, and is pursued by later parts.Doublet offuga.
Anything in literature, poetry, film, painting, etc., that resembles a fugue in structure or in its elaborate complexity and formality.
1981,William Irwin Thompson,The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page175:
Jacobsen's theory about the empty storehouse is still valid, for a myth never has one meaning only; a myth is a polyphonicfugue of many voices.
And most of them women, and these only stayed in a fugue state for a relatively short time, like a couple of hours or a couple of days. As far as we know Malenovfugued for close to twenty years.
2021, Robin Wasserman,Mother Daughter Widow Wife, page87:
Fugue states can have phases—it's possible shefugued from the start, and only woke to what was happening on that bus.
Ca. 1600, borrowed in the musical sense fromItalianfuga, itself a borrowing fromLatinfuga.Doublet offougue (from the inherited Italian cognate). The sense “flight” (18th c.) may be a new borrowing from the Italian.
