h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In Italian "Sonata" means played (on instrument(s)) and "Cantata" means sung.

How did the Sonnet get to be so called?

Consider the connection between the sonnet and the musical "sonata".

Poetry was in a much closer, even interdependent relationship with music in the Renaissance period than it is now. Short poems such as sonnets were known as lyrics, and the popular ones were set to music almost as a matter of course. It therefore makes sense for a type of poem to have a musical name. We refer, for instance, to 'ballads' which can be actual songs, or poems written in the ballad style.

Well yes "ballad" means dance after all . . . and "aria" means wind I suppose . . . still posting 1 doesn't seem to have been answered quite convincingly yet . . . for the best answer

Aside from our understanding of both sonnet and sonata as formal, stylized compositions in which themes are stated, developed, and restated, all in a recognizable pattern and within certain conventions, both terms come from the Italian 'sonare', to sound (which is rich with connotation: to explore, to test depth, to dive, etc.). But sonata, at least, seems to have come from the past participle, which suggests something sounded, or perhaps set to music. Could this, then, lead us to an answer to the question posed in posting 1: a little lyric, or song, or at least a little poem intended for musical accompaniment ?
Especially, a little love song.

Not convinced; after all we have a perfectly good word for "sung-as-opposed-to-sounded", in Cantata.

I guess like a lot of musical terminology it's just not got a tidy explanation.

If it derives from the idea of an instrumental piece, perhaps its resemblance lay in its relative shortness, in the days when songs could be interminable, and instrumentals were either dances or appetising preludes to the same interminable songs. (Thinking of medieval rather than renaissance times)