cadence
Meanings
noun
- The act or state of declining or sinking.
- The measure or beat of movement.
- Balanced, rhythmic flow.
- The general inflection or modulation of the voice, or of any sound.
- A progression of at least two chords which conclude a piece of music, section or musical phrases within it. Sometimes referred to analogously as musical punctuation.
- A cadenza, or closing embellishment; a pause before the end of a strain, which the performer may fill with a flight of fancy.
- A fall in inflection of a speaker’s voice, such as at the end of a sentence.
- A dance move which ends a phrase.
- The rhythm and sequence of a series of actions.
- The number of steps per minute.
- The number of revolutions per minute of the cranks or pedals of a bicycle.
- A chant that is sung by military personnel while running or marching; a jody call.
verb
- To give a cadence to.
- To give structure to.
name
- A female given name from English.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French cadence, from Old Italian cadenza (“conclusion of a phrase of music”), from Latin *cadentia (literally “a falling”), form of cadēns, the present participle of cadō (“to fall, to cease”). The Latin verb is inherited, via Proto-Italic *kadō, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱad-e- (“to fall”, thematic present). Doublet of cadenza and chance.
Synonyms
Related words
Derived words
Translations
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.