musical
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
Pleasing to the ear.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
myoozihkuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmjuzɪkəl
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.
adjective
Of, belonging or relating to music, or to its performance or notation.
Characterized by or capable of producing music
“The birds outside my window make musical chirps every morning.”
Talented in or devoted to music
“Comes from a very musical family.”
Pleasing to the ear; sounding agreeably; having the qualities of music; melodious; harmonious.
Containing or constituting or characterized by pleasing melody
Pertaining to a class of games in which players move while music plays, but have to take a fixed position when it stops; by extension, any situation where people repeatedly change positions.
noun
A stage performance, show or film that involves singing, dancing and musical numbers performed by the cast as well as acting.
A play or film whose action and dialogue is interspersed with singing and dancing
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Of, belonging or relating to music, or to its performance or notation.
Used this way, musical 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
- No strong connotation
- 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.
How It’s Used
The word’s distinct uses, one example each.
Characterizedadjective
“The birds outside my window make musical chirps every morning.”
Talentedadjective
“Comes from a very musical family.”
More ways to use musical
- “Comes from a very musical family.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Produces music by means of pins on a revolving cylinder that strike the tuned teeth of a comb-like metal plate.
A child's game in which players march to music around a group of chairs that contains one chair less than the number of players.
A play or film whose action and dialogue is interspersed with singing and dancing.
A musical work that has been created.
Opera in which the musical and dramatic elements are equally important.
An expressive style of music.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Antonyms
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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.