Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A rapid slide through a series of consecutive tones in a scalelike passage.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In pianoforte-playing, an effect produced by running the tips of the fingers rapidly along the keys, without striking them with the fingers separately.
  • noun In violin-playing, a rapid slur. Also glissato, glissicando, and glissicato.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • (Mus.) A gliding effect; gliding.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun music A musical term that refers to either a continuous sliding one pitch to another (or "true" glissando), or an incidental scale played while moving from one melodic note to another (or "effective" glissando).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adverb (musical direction) in the manner of a glissando (with a rapidly executed series of notes)
  • noun a rapid series of ascending or descending notes on the musical scale

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French glissade; see glissade + -ando (as in accelerando).]

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Examples

  • The technical operation known as glissando is peculiar to the harp alone.

    Principles of orchestration 1923

  • I've read most of my trip book, Thomas Harlan's Wasteland of Flint, which is a kind of glissando Lovecraftian space opera set in an imperfectly realized alternate history in which the Aztecs conquered the world and run the human empire in space.

    Kenneth Hite's Journal princeofcairo 2004

  • The strings are generally plucked with the fingers, but the peasants obtain charming "glissando" effects by sweeping the strings lightly one after the other with the fingers or side of the hand.

    Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" Various

  • Buckmaster cites the french horn glissando in the introduction to Marvin Gaye's I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

    Elton John, the Beach Boys and the fine art of pop alchemy George Cole 2010

  • She made windchimes from the song-storms 'leavings, and they shone in the windows and chimed glissando like the sweetest eighth-notes and sixteenth-notes.

    Valentines, part the first mllelaurel 2009

  • I stripped the back of my right thumb playing glissando - that's where you flick the keyboard to produce that crashing down the keys effect - and one of the keys in the lower register must have had a sharp edge, so my left thumb has a patch of missing skin.

    On Sunday morning, I woke with bleeding fingers and a pocket full of dice zornhau 2009

  • Start slow, speed up, seek a machine-like precision -- no buzzes, no squeaks on the chord changes or glissando, varied tone, volume.

    Practicing Steve Perry 2010

  • Start slow, speed up, seek a machine-like precision -- no buzzes, no squeaks on the chord changes or glissando, varied tone, volume.

    Archive 2010-06-01 Steve Perry 2010

  • The jocular expression of an approaching dangerous social situation is often conveyed by people sounding out its ominous low-pitched glissando quavers.

    Archive 2010-04-01 DC 2010

  • After Mr. Goines alighted to the stage and played a solo on soprano, Mr. Gordon climaxed the tune with a glissando and high note, phrased more like a saxophone than a tr ombone.

    Singing and Swinging 2010

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