prothalamion

• prothalamium

After Prothalamion, title of a 16th-century poem by Edmund Spenser, from Ancient Greek πρό (pró, “for”) + thalamion, as in epithalamion.

prothalamion (plural prothalamions or prothalamia)

1. (literary) A song or poem in honour of a bride and bridegroom about to be married.

   Synonym: epithalamium

   • 2000, Pavan K. Varma, Ghalib: The Man, The Times, Penguin UK, →ISBN:

     Zauq then wrote his own prothalamion in which the last verse (in the same vein as Ghalib's) challenged the ability of those who made a claim to be poets to equal his writing of a sehra. Zauq's prothalamion was given very wide publicity by the professional singers in the palace, and the next day it was published in the local newspaper.

• “prothalamium”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.