diminuendo

Borrowed from Italian diminuendo

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪˌmɪnjuːˈɛndəʊ/

diminuendo (plural diminuendos) (Symbol: >)

1. (music) A dynamic mark directing that a passage is to be played gradually more softly
2. (music) A passage having this mark
3. (metaphoric) The gradual dying away of something.
   • 1988, Robert James Nelson, Willa Cather and France: In Search of the Lost Language, →ISBN, page 79:

     Thus, in "Flavia and Her Artists" (1905), for example, a fiction of consonance in diminuendo, the French subtext states a set of harmonies (the young American returned from France) and cacophonies (the supercilious French art critic, Roux) shedding light on the main text with its own consonances of intergenerationsl friendship, marital loyalty, artistic pleasure, and joyful lesbianism.

   • 1998, Edward Abbey, The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel, →ISBN:

     Harlow gazed, like Henry, out the wide corner window, enjoying the diminuendos of the light.

   • 2018, Lionel Shriver, The Standing Chandelier:

     Jillian haad the kind of charm that wore off. Or after enough romantic diminuendos, that's what she theorized.

diminuendo (comparative more diminuendo, superlative most diminuendo)

1. (music) played in this style

diminuendo (comparative more diminuendo, superlative most diminuendo)

1. (music) describing a passage having this mark

• crescendo

diminuendo

1. (gerund of diminuire) diminishing, decreasing

diminuendo m (plural diminuendi)

1. (music) diminuendo

• inumidendo

dīminuendō

1. dative masculine singular of dīminuendus
2. dative neuter singular of dīminuendus
3. ablative masculine singular of dīminuendus
4. ablative neuter singular of dīminuendus

diminuendo m (plural diminuendos)

1. minuend.

• minuendo (Brazil)