alla breve
noun · adverb
Simple meaning
A musical time signature indicating two or four half notes to a measure.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ahluhbreevSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɑləbɹiv
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
music
A musical time signature indicating two or four half notes to a measure
music
A time signature for which the half note is the beat and there are two beats per measure.
adverb
music
According to the time signature for which the half note is the beat and there are two beats per measure.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A musical time signature indicating two or four half notes to a measure
Used this way, alla breve is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a musical use: it is everyday language among musicians and listeners, and specialised outside that.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Music/performance
- Arts writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.