It's Merriam Webster's Word of the Day for November 6th.

Today's word is a cappella, spelled as two words, A-C-A-P-P-P-E-L-L-A.

Acapella is an adverb or adjective.

When a song is performed a cappella, it is sung unaccompanied by instrumental music.

Here's the word used in a sentence from Billboard by Kyle Dennis.

In a video posted to Twitter, H-E-R delivers a hauntingly beautiful cover of Coldplay's classic Fix You,

which peaked at number 59 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2005.

Backed by four of her background singers, H-E-R belts out the 2005 hit, completely Acapella.

Acapella arrived in English in the 18th century via the Italian phrase,

a cappella, meaning in chapel or choir style.

Medieval Latin's word cappella, meaning chapel,

is the source of the English word chapel.

The acapella style reached preeminence in the late 16th century, in the music that composer Giovanni Pierluge de la Pastrina wrote for the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican.

Because no independent instrumental parts were written down,

scholars once thought that the choir sang

unaccompanied. But current evidence makes clear that an organ or other instruments doubled some

or several of the vocal parts. Regardless, today, a cappella describes a purely vocal performance.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokoloski.

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