Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Music Of or using only five tones, usually the first, second, third, fifth, and sixth tones of a diatonic scale.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In music, consisting of five tones; especially, pertaining to a pentatonic scale (which see, under scale).
Wiktionary
- adj. music Based on five tones.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. relating to a pentatonic scale
Examples
“There is no doubt that the pentatonic is the musical scale of all Malaysia, and probably of all China; and none also that the diatonic, almost universal in Europe, is the musical scale of portions of India.”
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878.
“Goethe has there suggested; and we shall find it can be arranged in what I may call a pentatonic scale of culture.”
“* 2: That means the pentatonic is the (I, II, III, V, VI)”
“* 2: That means the pentatonic is the (I, III, IV, V, VII)”
“Williams says that Simon created the five notes of steel drum music, known as the pentatonic scale.”
“The Sudanese music is based on the so called pentatonic scale: scale with 5 notes to the octave, like the black notes in the piano (in contrast to an heptatonic,7 notes, scale like the gypsy or Egyptian scale.”
WN.com - Articles related to SOUTHERN AFRICA: Competing for Limpopo water
“She hit her high point early on with a powerful reading of "Siboney" that used minor and pentatonic modes to reference Middle-Eastern music and even traveled momentarily through a reggae beat.”
“In his experience, orchestral works by composers of Chinese or Japanese origin just featured a lot of "the stereotypical sounds of that region," such as a pentatonic melody with a parallel harmony in fifths classical European music favors parallelisms in thirds or sixths or the insertion of gongs or bamboo flutes.”
“The combination of African rhythms and the pentatonic scale and European instrumentation and arrangement.”
“In 1976, Stephen Sondheim used the pentatonic scale to create his score for Pacific Overtures.”
The Huffington Post: George Heymont: Basking in the Multiple Charms of The Secret Garden
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pentatonic’.
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EN-HU - important words for a HU inte...
Words only (I left out the expressions) from Geza Kerenyi's EN-HU interpreters' dictionary. Most of them pose some difficulty when interpreted between HU and EN in either or both directions.
abalone, abrasive, abstractionist, abstruse, abysmal, academia, accessibility, accessible, acclimate, accolade, accompanist, achiever and 1469 more...
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MUSIC - jazz
Afro, habanera, pentatonic scale, bop, bebop, jazz, cool jazz, pentatonic, malignment, music genre, jazz musician, syncopate and 437 more...
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MUSIC - ALL TERMS
With focus on non-classical styles, but not excluding terms of the latter.
banjo, accompaniment, acoustic bass, bass guitar, bass clef, ground, brass, cornet, Mute, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, arrangement and 866 more...
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-tonic
notes in a musical scale; relating to music; muscles
pentatonic, diatonic, pretonic, myatonic, vagatonic, hematonic, isotonic, monotonic, tonic
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harmony of the spheres
tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant, subtonic, leading tone, progression, sonata, concerto, allegro and 247 more...
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hedges's Words
wii, crepuscule, adumbrate, concatenation, sufi, qawwali, furry, riot, mellifluous, conspiracy, etymology, tea cozy and 369 more...
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penta-
five; having five
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Kaichi's Wordie Darlings, or I'm a Lo...
persnickety, discombobulated, braggadoccio, anthropomorphous, antelucan, confluxible, anomalous, poseur, gallivant, poppycock, falderal, gewgaw and 705 more...
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rememberers
prolix, ageusia, animadversion, anodyne, antic, arabesque, beadle, brachymetropia, colophon, desquamation, diaphoresis, diegesis and 3251 more...
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Musical Terms
Various terms, common and uncommon, relating to musical scores.
largo, andante, adagio, lento, moderato, allegro, vivace, presto, fermata, appoggiatura, acciaccatura, trill and 56 more...
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Literarie: The Quiet Girl
A novel by Peter Høeg.
sconce, furniture, ostinato, quack grass, child-molester ch..., blonde, granite, angst, dissolve, security, pentatonic, metabolism and 33 more...
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Piping
tailback, blowpipe, valve, drone, chanter, bag, skeepskin, pipe banner, bag seasoning, stocks, reed, henderson and 49 more...
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Quow's Words
antidisestablishm..., xenophobe, eccentric, quiche, ominous, pentatonic, rhythm, alluvial, flounced
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pentatonic.

chained_bear Another usage note on hexatonic. Jul 31, 2008
bilby "She stood there again now. For a tone memory like his, there was no difference between past and present. That's what was painful - he could never turn off the sound of loss. It was tragic, but it was also wonderfully sentimental; the day he died it would be just as bad as now, or worse.
Above her tone he heard a pentatonic scale. Exotic, like drums from a tropical jungle, and also deep breathing, like a blacksmith's bellows in the Friland Museum in Århus."
bosom - "He took the envelope from a large congratulations card from the dressing table, and on the back wrote with a lipstick what she had demanded. He handed the envelope to the woman.
'In the movies,' he said, 'women put perfumed notes like that into their bosom. Could I help you do that?'"
- 'The Quiet Girl', Peter Høeg. Mar 18, 2008