fingering
noun
Simple meaning
The placement of the fingers for playing different notes on a musical instrument.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
finggeringSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfɪŋɡɚɪŋ
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
musicuncountable
The placement of the fingers for playing different notes (or sequences of notes) on a musical instrument
musicuncountable
The act of using one's fingers in the playing of a musical instrument.
musiccountable
A specific method of using the fingers to play an instrument.
A thin woollen yarn for stockings.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The placement of the fingers for playing different notes (or sequences of notes) on a musical instrument
Used this way, fingering 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.
More ways to use fingering
- “The piano teacher showed me the correct fingering for the difficult chord.”noun
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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.