clef
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of clef
1570–80; < Middle French < Latin clāvis key
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
After all, her next book is a roman à clef about Gala, and writing about a woman who might be in dire straits would be exploitative.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 1, 2025
It is not signed by Chopin, but the handwriting includes his distinctive bass clef.
From BBC ● Oct. 29, 2024
The story quoted a few skeptics—among them the writer Harry Monaghan, who’d written a well-received roman à clef five years prior, and who had a regular column in the Post.
From Slate ● May 27, 2023
That seems far-fetched, but to Oxfordians even “Hamlet” is a pièce à clef, all the major characters being fictionalized versions of people in the earl’s life.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 21, 2023
How about Grizzly Bears Don’t Fly Airplanes for the lines of the bass clef, or Empty Garbage Before Dad Flips or Elephants Get Big Dirty Feet for the lines of the treble clef?
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
One of Sacks’ patients, for example, found that the embroidered border of his bathmat tended to transform into elaborate staves and clefs of music.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 22, 2013
The 3-D visuals during Franz Schubert are also uninspiring: the white smudges washing across the black screen aren't a patch on the spaceships and cascading treble clefs we get later.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 10, 2013
He studied at the Damrosch Institute of Musical Art, sang in choirs, doodled clefs & staffs on tablecloths and phone pads and dreamed of a career in music.
From Time Magazine Archive
But the Sourcebook also includes such arbitrary signs as plus and minus in mathematics and the clefs in music.
From Time Magazine Archive
The bass and treble clefs were also once moveable, but it is now very rare to see them anywhere but in their standard positions.
From "Understanding Basic Music Theory" by Catherine Schmidt-Jones and Russel Jones
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
