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Glite Dictionary
🔉 A gradual decrease 🔉 Gradually softer
diminuendo

diminuendo

1 8.2
A slow decrease in volume in music
  • noun
  • /dɪˌmɪn.juˈɛn.doʊ/
  • Specialized
translation icon : diminuendo
  • As the band concluded their performance, the diminuendo created a serene atmosphere in the concert hall.
  • diminuendo and crescendo

And OK, so hands rising is crescendo diminuendo.

Examples

  • All love has a denouement, a declining sun; all stories resolve with a decrescendo, a diminuendo to silence.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • I can play the lute and know its gamut, notes, notation, and the crescendo and diminuendo (193-94).

    Academic text (1991)

  • Noted for diminuendos on high notes.

    Academic text (2003)

  • The crescendos and the diminuendos!

    Academic text (1995)

  • The deep balance of the father's voice subjugates the darkness to the final diminuendo of the Beggs' bedtime.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • The main difference is that, at the State Opera, you have to start all the crescendos a little later than you would in an open pit, because otherwise you get too loud too soon; and you must come down with the diminuendos obviously a little quicker, and you cannot sustain loud chords in the brass as long as you can in Bayreuth.

    Academic text (1998)

  • In the exposition, it forms a 10-bar diminuendo before the next leggiero section; in the recapitulation, it is only six bars long, but Lugansky has decided to balance things out by borrowing and transposing the missing four-bar fragment.

    Blog text (11)

  • The musician gradually brought the piece to a soft diminuendo, allowing the final note to linger in the air.

  • In the score, the composer indicated a diminuendo to signal the end of the movement.

Synonyms

fading away
vsdiminuendo
5 3.8

A slow loss of brightness, sound, or strength until almost gone

is a gradual decrease that does not require reaching almost nothing
attenuation
vsdiminuendo
  • Specialized
3 7.9

To make a sound or signal weaker

is specific to music and means a gradual fall in loudness or intensity
decrescendo
vsdiminuendo
  • Specialized
1 7.4

A gradual decrease in volume in music

is broader naming decrease in loudness or general intensity

Antonyms

crescendo
  • Specialized
20 6.1

A gradual increase in loudness or strength in music

How Loud

diminuendo
  • Specialized
1 8.2
morendo
  • Specialized
9.9

Surface Forms

diminuendo singular
diminuendos plural

Etymology

Diminuendo comes from Italian and from the Latin verb minuere, which means 'to lessen', and it is the same root as English diminish. So, in music a diminuendo is a direction to make the sound gradually less loud.