Definitions

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

  • noun The seventh tone or degree of a scale that is a half tone below the tonic; a subtonic.

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

  • noun music scale degree seven when the first scale degree is one half step higher than the seventh scale degree

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

  • noun (music) the seventh note of the diatonic scale

Etymologies

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

[From its tendency to lead into or rise to the tonic.]

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Examples

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