GAMUT
What does "GAMUT" mean?
The complete range or scope of something.
Meanings
- The full extent or range of something, from one end to the other. Her emotions ran the gamut from joy to despair in a single afternoon.
- In music, the entire range of notes a voice or instrument can produce, or the whole musical scale. The aria demands the full gamut of a soprano's range. technical
Did you know?
- 'Gamut' is squeezed from two medieval music terms - 'gamma' (the lowest note) and 'ut' (the first solfege syllable, ancestor of 'do') - both from the 11th-century monk Guido of Arezzo, the same teacher who gave us do-re-mi.
Word origin
A contraction of 'gamma ut' from medieval music: 'gamma' was the lowest note of the scale and 'ut' the first of the six syllables (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la) named by Guido of Arezzo, so 'gamut' came to mean the whole range.
Remember it
GAMUT = GAMma + UT, the bottom note plus the first syllable - hold the whole musical scale in five letters.
A little poem
From the cellar note to the rafter's cry-
a monk once mapped the climb
and packed the whole stair in a word.
tercet
Wordplay
- A singer's career ran the gamut from low notes to high notes. Technically that's the only direction a gamut runs.
What it teaches
To truly know a thing, you have to travel its whole range, not just visit the middle.
Quick facts
What does GAMUT mean?
The complete range or scope of something.
Is GAMUT a valid word?
Yes — GAMUT is one of the answer words in Wordul, the daily word game.
How many letters is GAMUT?
GAMUT has 5 letters and 2 syllables.
Where does GAMUT come from?
A contraction of 'gamma ut' from medieval music: 'gamma' was the lowest note of the scale and 'ut' the first of the six syllables (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la) named by Guido of Arezzo, so 'gamut' came to mean the whole range.
What can GAMUT teach us?
To truly know a thing, you have to travel its whole range, not just visit the middle.
How players do
Be the first to solve it.