WK20 Vocabulary Definitions
a cappella [ah kuh-pel-uh] adverb, adjective
1. without instrumental accompaniment.
2. in the style of church or chapel music.
abstract [ab-strakt] adjective
1. thought of apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances: an abstract idea.
2. expressing a quality or characteristic apart from any specific object or instance.
3. theoretical; not applied or practical: abstract science.
4. difficult to understand; abstruse: abstract speculations.
aesthetic [es-thet-ik] adjective, noun
1. pertaining to a sense of the beautiful or to the science of aesthetics.
2. having a sense of the beautiful; characterized by a love of beauty.
3. pertaining to, involving, or concerned with pure emotion and sensation as opposed to pure intellectuality.
4. a philosophical theory or idea of what is aesthetically valid at a given time and place.
avant-garde[uh-vahnt-gahrd] noun, adjective
1. the advance group in any field whose works are characterized chiefly by unorthodox and experimental methods.
2. of or pertaining to the experimental treatment of artistic, musical, or literary material.
3. belonging to the avant-garde: an avant-garde composer.
4. unorthodox or daring; radical.
cacophony [kuh-kof-uh-nee] noun
1. harsh discordance of sound; dissonance: a cacophony of hoots, cackles, and wails.
2. a discordant and meaningless mixture of sounds: the cacophony produced by city traffic at midday.
3. inharmonious or harsh sound; discord; cacophony.
4. disagreement or incongruity.
dissonance[dis-uh-nuh ns] noun
1. inharmonious or harsh sound; discord; cacophony.
2. disagreement or incongruity.
dulcet[duhl-sit] adjective, noun
1. pleasant to the ear; melodious: the dulcet tones of the cello.
2. pleasant or agreeable to the eye or the feelings; soothing.
libretto [li-bret-oh] noun
1. the text or words of an opera or similar extended musical composition; book containing such text.
motif [moh-teef] noun
1. a recurring subject, theme, idea, etc., especially in a literary, artistic, or musical work.
2. a distinctive and recurring form, shape, figure, etc., in a design, as in a painting or on wallpaper.
3. a dominant idea or feature: the profit motif of free enterprise.
surrealistic [suh-ree-uh-lis-tik] adjective
1. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream; unreal; fantastic