allegro
Americanadjective
noun
-
allegros
plural
adjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of allegro
1625–35; < Italian < Latin alacer brisk. Cf. alacrity
Explanation
In music, allegro distinguishes a movement that's meant to be played very quickly. Your piano teacher might instruct you to try playing a piece allegro. If you're reading sheet music and you see the word allegro, you'll know that particular section or movement should be played in a lively, spirited way. There are many Italian musical terms that describe or direct the tempo, or speed, of the music, and allegro is one of these. The word means "cheerful or gay" in Italian from the Latin root alacrem, "lively, cheerful, or brisk."
Vocabulary lists containing allegro
Curtain Call: Dance and Theater Terms
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Music - Middle School
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Music - High School
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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:
“I have long been thinking of abandoning these nonsensical terms allegro, andante, adagio, presto,” Beethoven wrote in an 1817 letter to Hofrat von Mosel, “and Mälzel’s metronome gives us the best opportunity to do so.”
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 21, 2023
They brought dynamic agility to the opening allegro of No. 8 — Watkins’s cello sneaking up and pouncing into fizzy bursts of violin.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 10, 2022
Even so, “Mozart and Contemporaries” came off as an unbroken, unfurling, hypnotically broad, almost dreamlike silk of sound, inward-looking and wistful in both major and minor keys, in both andante and allegro.
From New York Times ● Feb. 23, 2022
Where golf architects hear an allegro and an adagio, championship officials hear cash registers.
From Golf Digest ● Aug. 29, 2016
Gasping for air like I just completed a grand allegro combination.
From "The Sea in Winter" by Christine Day
But the words she wrote are a symphony, an ode to the joy of wilderness, adagios and allegros and leitmotifs that sing out from the page.
From Scientific American ● May 2, 2013
In Viva Vivaldi!, one of the finest examples of bravura dancing ever fashioned, he is all glitter and grin, allowing his dancers to free their inventiveness in a blur of twinkling allegros.
From Time Magazine Archive
His allegros are sometimes difficult; but the passages fairly belong to the instrument for which they were composed, and were suggested by his consummate knowledge of the finger-board and the powers of the bow.
From The Violin Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators by George Hart
As most first movements in the sonatas of that composer are allegros I tried the beginning several times as an allegro, but it sounded radically wrong.
From Violin Mastery Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers by Frederick Herman Martens
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.
