Definitions

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

  • noun Identity of pitch; the interval of a perfect prime.
  • noun The combination of parts at the same pitch or in octaves.
  • noun The action of speaking the same words simultaneously.
  • noun Performance of an action at the same time.
  • noun Agreement; concord.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Sounding alone; unisonous.
  • In music, sounded simultaneously; specifically, noting two or more voice-parts that are coincident in pitch, or a passage or effect thus produced.
  • noun In music: The interval, melodic or harmonic, between any tone and a tone of exactly the same pitch; a perfect prime, acoustically represented by the ratio 1:1. The term is also used as a synonym of prime (as, an augmented unison), though this is objectionable.
  • noun The interval of the octave, especially when occurring between male and female voices, or between higher and lower instruments of the same class.
  • noun The state of sounding at the same pitch—that is, of being at the interval of a unison.
  • noun A single unvaried tone; a monotone. Same as unison string.
  • noun Accordance; agreement; harmony; concord.

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

  • adjective obsolete Sounding alone.
  • adjective (Mus.) Sounded alike in pitch; unisonant; unisonous.
  • noun Harmony; agreement; concord; union.
  • noun (Mus.) Identity in pitch; coincidence of sounds proceeding from an equality in the number of vibrations made in a given time by two or more sonorous bodies. Parts played or sung in octaves are also said to be in unison, or in octaves.
  • noun rare A single, unvaried.
  • noun in agreement; agreeing in tone; in concord.

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

  • noun The state of being together, in harmony, at the same time, as one, synchronized.
  • noun music The simultaneous playing of an identical note more than once.

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

  • noun corresponding exactly
  • noun (music) two or more sounds or tones at the same pitch or in octaves
  • noun occurring together or simultaneously

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin ūnisonus, in unison, from Late Latin, monotonous : Latin ūni-, uni- + Latin sonus, sound; see swen- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English "unisoun", from Middle French "unisson", from Medieval Latin unisonus having the same sound, from Latin uni- + sonus sound.

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