Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A complete range or extent: a face that expressed a gamut of emotions, from rage to peaceful contentment.
- n. Music The entire series of recognized notes.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In music:
- n. The first or gravest note in Guido's scale of music; gamma ut.
- n. The major scale, whether indicated by notes or syllables, or merely sung.
- n. A scale on which notes in music are written or printed, consisting of lines and spaces which are named after the first seven letters of the alphabet.
- n. In old Eng. church music, the key of G. Also gamma.
- n. Figuratively, the whole scale, range, or compass of a thing.
Wiktionary
- n. A (normally) complete range.
- n. All the notes in the musical scale.
- n. All the colours available to a device such as a monitor or printer.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The scale.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the entire scale of musical notes
- n. a complete extent or range:
Etymologies
- Middle English, the musical scale, from Medieval Latin gamma ut, low G : gamma, lowest note of the medieval scale (from Greek, gamma; see gamma) + ut, first note of the lowest hexachord (after ut, first word in a Latin hymn to Saint John the Baptist, the initial syllables of successive lines of which were sung to the notes of an ascending scale CDEFGA: Ut queant laxis resonare fibris Mira gestorum famuli tuorum, Solve polluti labii reatum, Sancte Iohannes).
Examples
“Interpretations of that film run the gamut from a coming of age-story, to a healing of maternal bonds, to a scrutiny of the zeal behind technological advancement, and it goes on & on.”
“As for the clothes, they ranged the gamut from a minidress with sharp leather shoulders to a corset accented with a tweed top.”
“My personal favorites, all bolt guns, run the gamut from a .257 Roberts thru a 7mm Remington Magnum (specific application there, not general deer work).”
Whats the best deer hunting caliber? and gun? im brand new to hunting so any advice is appreciated.
“The specimens cover a gamut from the best of their kind to the run-of-the-mill and tacky.”
Book Review: The Handy Book of Artistic Printing : Scrubbles.net
“The whole gamut is covered — working with emerging technologies, using the power of inquiry through key questions (provided), helping underachieving students, learning from assessment so your teaching can change and improve based on the data, etc.”
Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice « Books « Literacy News
“It runs the gamut from the terrifying to the romantic to the steamy to the outlandish to the science fiction type.”
“Today, science fiction runs the entire gamut from the pulpish to the mainstream (Chabon, McCarthy) and ideas may be served up wholesale in many other media.”
“These transcripts of the 30 "best" selected by the programme's deviser and producer for 34 years run the gamut from the farceur Ben Travers, who saw WG Grace play and was in Australia during England's 1928-29 tour when Don Bradman made his Test debut, to Lily Allen, whose interest in the game was sparked by the 2005 Ashes.”
The Guardian: The Best Views from the Boundary – Test Match Special's Greatest Interviews
“These transcripts of the 30 'best' interviews run the gamut from the farceur Ben Travers, who saw WG Grace play, to Lily Allen”
The Guardian: The Best Views from the Boundary – Test Match Special's Greatest Interviews
“Instead, motivations run a complicated gamut from the stark realities of economics to oscillating dynamics of power and powerlessness, sometimes sadomasochistically tinged.”
Good Review for Sex Work Books in Qualitative Sociology « Bound, Not Gagged
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gamut’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
jwjarvis gamut of communication tools Sep 30, 2010
sionnach So would Tut-tut be the tonic of a defunct Guidonian hexapharaoh. The kind of pick-me-up my mummy used to prepare for me.
Seriously, that is a cool explanation. Though I'm surprised nobody has yet sullied this page with the quote about the Hollywood starlet whose emotions "ran the gamut from A to B". Sep 12, 2008
elisheba thanks for this explanation, shevek! Sep 12, 2008
shevek Comes from the lowest note in medieval music pedagogy, which was called Gamma-Ut. Gamma because it was lowest octave of the note G, Ut because it was the tonic of a Guidonian hexachord. Sep 12, 2008