glissando

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Italian glissando.

Noun

glissando (countable and uncountable, plural glissandi or glissandos or glissandoes)

1. (music) Either a continuous sliding from one pitch to another ("true" glissando), or an incidental scale played while moving from one melodic note to another ("effective" glissando).
   • 2018, Robert Philip, The Classical Music Lover's Companion to Orchestral Music, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 465:

     After another alternation of the two elements, there is a more playful episode, in which flute and bassoon take up the first element, with swooping glissando on the ondes Martenot.

2. A method of playing an electric guitar in which a metal bar is held at right angles across the strings and rapidly moved up and down, creating a smooth, lush sound.

Derived terms

• glissando babbler

Translations

musical term

Chinese: Mandarin: 刮奏 (guāzòu), 滑音 (zh) (huáyīn) Esperanto: glisando Finnish: glissando (fi) French: glissando (fr) m Hungarian: glissando Italian: glissando (it) m Polish: biegnik, glissando (pl) n Spanish: glisando m

Verb

glissando (third-person singular simple present glissandos, present participle glissandoing, simple past and past participle glissandoed)

1. (music) To play with a glissando or sliding effect.

Further reading

• glissando on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Noun

glissando m (plural glissandos)

1. (music) glissando

Further reading

• “glissando”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.