sonata
noun
Simple meaning
A musical composition of 3 or 4 movements of contrasting forms.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
suhnahtuhSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
səˈnɑtə
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 composition of 3 or 4 movements of contrasting forms
music
A musical composition for one or a few instruments, one of which is frequently a piano, in three or four movements that vary in key and tempo.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A musical composition of 3 or 4 movements of contrasting forms
Used this way, sonata 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 sonata
- “The pianist practiced the complex sonata for hours each day.”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.