grace note

American  

noun

Music.

1. a note not essential to the harmony or melody, added as an embellishment, especially an appoggiatura.

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grace note British  

noun

1. music a note printed in small type to indicate that it is melodically and harmonically nonessential

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Etymology

Origin of grace note

First recorded in 1815–25

Example Sentences

In a grace note, the actor plays himself as a young man, too, as though his older self is still stuck in his past.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 1, 2025

“How to Break” abandons showing for telling long before it hits the end of its nearly two-hour, no-intermission run time, but the design’s visual ambiguity is a welcome grace note.

From Seattle Times • Apr. 5, 2023

This enables the writers to render the character as an invisible presence at an occasion where she's acutely missed, a harmonizing grace note within a dissonant sonata.

From Salon • Dec. 9, 2021

And the creative director Virginie Viard’s spectacular princess-style gown only amplified this, punctuating her collection with a happily-ever-after grace note.

From New York Times • Nov. 10, 2021

The first violin perceptibly flatted a C that should have been natural; the clarionet blew a bubble instead of a grace note; Miss Carrington giggled and the youth with parted hair swallowed an olive seed.

From The Voice of the City: Further Stories of the Four Million by Henry, O.