music

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.
2. n. Vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm.
3. n. A musical composition.
4. n. The written or printed score for such a composition.
5. n. Such scores considered as a group: We keep our music in a stack near the piano.
6. n. A musical accompaniment.
7. n. A particular category or kind of music.
8. n. An aesthetically pleasing or harmonious sound or combination of sounds: the music of the wind in the pines.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Any pleasing succession of sounds or of combinations of sounds; melody or harmony: as, the music of the winds, or of the sea.
2. n. The science of combining tones in rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic order, so as to produce effects that shall be intelligible and agreeable to the ear.
3. n. The art of using rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic materials in the production of definite compositions, or works having scientific correctness, artistic finish and proportion, esthetic effectiveness, and an emotional content or meaning.
4. n. A composition made up of tones artistically and scientifically disposed, or such compositions collectively: as, a piece of music. Music is classified and named with respect to its origin or general style as barbarous, popular, national, artistic, sacred, secular, etc.; with respect to its technical form as melodic, harmonic, polyphonic or contrapuntal, homophonic, Gregorian, classical, romantic, strict, free, lyric, epic, dramatic, pastoral, mensurable, figured, etc.; with respect to its method of performance as vocal, instrumental, solo, choral, orchestral, concerted, etc.; and with respect to its application as ecclesiastical or church, theatrical, operatic, military, or as concert-, chamber-, dance-music, etc.
5. n. A musical composition as rendered by instruments or by the voice.
6. n. The art of producing melody or harmony by means of the voice or of instruments.
7. n. The written or printed score of a composition; also, such scores collectively: as, a book of music; music for the piano or the flute.
8. n. A company of performers of music; a band; an orchestra.
9. n. Pleasurable emotion, such as is produced by melodious and harmonious sounds; also, the source, cause, or occasion of such emotion.
10. n. Lively speech or action; liveliness; excited wrangling; excitement.
11. n. Diversion: sport; also, sense of the ridiculous. In this sense apparently confused with amuse; compare musical, 5.
12. To entice or seduce with music.
13. n. In golf, the degree of suppleness in the shaft of a club.

Wiktionary

1. n. A sound, or the study of such sounds, organized in time.
2. n. figuratively Any pleasing or interesting sounds.
3. n. A guide to playing or singing a particular tune; sheet music.
4. v. transitive To seduce or entice with music.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The science and the art of tones, or musical sounds, i. e., sounds of higher or lower pitch, begotten of uniform and synchronous vibrations, as of a string at various degrees of tension; the science of harmonical tones which treats of the principles of harmony, or the properties, dependences, and relations of tones to each other; the art of combining tones in a manner to please the ear.
2. n. Melody; a rhythmical and otherwise agreeable succession of tones.
3. n. Harmony; an accordant combination of simultaneous tones.
4. n. The written and printed notation of a musical composition; the score.
5. n. Love of music; capacity of enjoying music.
6. n. (Zoöl.) A more or less musical sound made by many of the lower animals. See Stridulation.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. (music) the sounds produced by singers or musical instruments (or reproductions of such sounds)
2. n. any agreeable (pleasing and harmonious) sounds
3. n. punishment for one's actions
4. n. musical activity (singing or whistling etc.)
5. n. an artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in a structured and continuous manner