folk ballad
1
3.5
- noun
- /foʊk ˈbæləd/
:
balada popular
- The children gathered around the fire to listen to a storyteller sing a traditional folk ballad about their ancestors.
- old folk ballads
Examples
-
Along the way, I strummed Okinawan folk ballads for the ladies on the riverwalk in San Antonio.
Fiction book (1998) -
Or maybe even third-person folk ballads of the "Molly Malone," "Barbara Allen" variety, something their quirky brethren.
Blog text (18) -
Her father, from Hebei Province in the north of China, is also said to have influenced her singing style with his appreciation for northern folk ballads (Lu 2010a).
Academic text (2016) -
At the festival, performers sang various folk ballads that celebrated the history of the region.
-
During the event, they shared a moving folk ballad that told the tale of love and loss in their village.
Synonyms
62
3.7
A song or poem that tells a story, often from folk tradition
11
2.2
A song people in a place sing for a long time that tells their stories
1
3.0
A song passed down in a community that tells their stories and beliefs
How Traditional
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'folk' (ordinary people/traditional) combined with 'ballad' (a narrative song) yields a narrative song associated with the people or tradition. This noun+noun combination follows common cross-linguistic patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reliably infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Folk ballad comes from simple, old songs sung by ordinary people, where folk means the people and ballad means a story-song. Imagine villagers sitting by a fire, singing a short tale about love or heroes that is passed down, so folk ballad today means a 'traditional song' that 'tells a story' in a community.