rhapsodicaladj.

1586 [implied in: J. Dee Let. 14 May in True & Faithful Relation Spirits (1659) i. 423 Thus much very rhapsodically, (yet faithfully),..I thought good to commit to the safe..conveyance of a young Merchant here. (at rhapsodically adv. 1)].

1599 J. Dee Let. with Briefe Disc. Apologeticall sig. A3 They are set down in the sixt Chapter, of an other little Rhapsodicall Treatise, intitled, The Compendious Rehearsall, &c. written aboue two yeares since.

1662 E. Martin Opinion i. 17 Dr. Heylin's Confutation of Fuller's Rhapsodical stories of the Church of England.

1692 A. Wood Athenæ Oxonienses II. 315 [Prynne's works] are looked upon to be rather rapsodical and confus'd, than any way polite or concise.

1760 L. Sterne Life Tristram Shandy I. xiii. 75 It is so long since the reader of this rhapsodical work has been parted from the midwife, that it is high time to mention her again to him.

1773 J. Noorthouck New Hist. London Index, sig. 6A2 Droit le Roy, a rhapsodical work, burnt at the Royal Exchange and at Westminster-Hall.

1834 Captive Vigils vii It will..be deemed a..presumptuous essay..to lay before the English reader a rhapsodical work of this alarming magnitude and antiquated shape, destitute of all the dramatic construction and busy incident, which now so generally compose the texture of a modern poem.

1703 J. Browne Mod. Pract. Physick Vindicated 1 The Rhapsodical Harangues of this Dispensarian, who oftentimes assumes the Air and Stile of a Romantick Writer, rather than that of a Serious Physician.

1783 H. Blair Lect. Rhetoric II. xxxix. 359 The Odes of Jean Baptiste Rousseau have been..justly celebrated... They are animated, without being rhapsodical.

1844 B. Disraeli Coningsby II. v. vii. 304 We..alternate between a supercilious neglect of genius and a rhapsodical pursuit of quacks.

1847 H. W. Longfellow Jrnl. 31 Oct. in S. Longfellow Life H. W. Longfellow (1886) II. iii. 96 A very striking, rhapsodical, forcible..sermon.

1885 J. Payn Talk of Town I. 213 The whole composition strikes me as rather rhapsodical.

1933 Ann. Amer. Acad. Polit. & Social Sci. 165 251 Mr. Heard's superabundant faith and optimism is born of a poetical or rhapsodical simplification of the facts which is eloquent to read but hardly sufficient fare for the modern social scientist.

1952 M. Kennedy Troy Chimneys 55 He grew so rhapsodical about the pleasures of life in a country parsonage that I advised him to take Orders himself.

2008 Guardian (Nexis) 21 Feb. 38 Music that can seem self-indulgently rhapsodical in other performances here seemed beautifully balanced and proportioned.

a1822 P. B. Shelley Ion in Prose Wks. (1888) II. 126 Does it belong to the medical or rhapsodical art, to determine whether Homer speaks rightly on this subject?

1834 N. A. Willard Treat. Music Hindoostan 35 The peculiar nature of the melody of Hindoostan not only permits but enjoins the singer..to break off sometimes..and fall into a rhapsodical embellishment called Alap.

1855 Dwight's Jrnl. Music 16 June 86/1 It was a Hungarian melody, by Erkel, a wild, pensive, rhapsodical andante, of charming poetic expression.

1910 C. H. H. Parry Johan Sebastian Bach xvii. 553 Such rhapsodical forms as some of the Toccatas..and the Chromatische Fantasie, with its bravura passages and its recitatives, represent the utmost of elasticity.

1938 Times 17 Nov. 12/4 His music is essentially rhapsodical—one thing leads to another by suggestion rather than logic.

2007 S. Spencer tr. H. Abert W. A. Mozart xxxvii. 840 Genuinely developed musical ideas, which he handles in a totally un-Bachian manner,..whereas the free and rhapsodical motifs have only an introductory and transitional character.