contralto

[ kuhn-tral-toh ]
See synonyms for contralto on Thesaurus.com
noun,plural con·tral·tos.
  1. the lowest female voice or voice part, intermediate between soprano and tenor.

  2. the alto, or highest male voice or voice part.

  1. a singer with a contralto voice.

adjective
  1. pertaining to the contralto voice or its compass.

Origin of contralto

1
1720–30; <Italian, equivalent to contr(a) contra-2 + alto alto

Words Nearby contralto

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use contralto in a sentence

  • 'My Lord, What a Night'Two gifted originals in divergent pursuits — music and physics — come together in this Ford’s Theatre production, based on the true story of the friendship between contralto Marian Anderson and scientist Albert Einstein.

  • That is not an instrument for the production of tones in the contralto compass.

    The Child-Voice in Singing | Francis E. Howard
  • What she sang he did not know, but her deep contralto, holding heaven in its tones, he both knew and understood.

    The White Shield | Myrtle Reed
  • The contralto and I were talking about it one day on the train and saying how glad we should be to get away from it.

    Memoirs of an American Prima Donna | Clara Louise Kellogg
  • With that there smote on our ears the sounds of two voices in altercation outside—one a woman's high contralto.

    The Adventures of Harry Revel | Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

British Dictionary definitions for contralto

contralto

/ (kənˈtræltəʊ, -ˈtrɑːl-) /


nounplural -tos or -ti (-tɪ)
  1. the lowest female voice, usually having a range of approximately from F a fifth below middle C to D a ninth above it: In the context of a choir often shortened to: alto

  2. a singer with such a voice

adjective
  1. of or denoting a contralto: the contralto part

Origin of contralto

1
C18: from Italian; see contra-, alto

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Cultural definitions for contralto

contralto

[ (kuhn-tral-toh) ]


The lowest range of the female singing voice; alto.

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.