Word.ws English Dictionary

agogic

agogic adjective: accentuating a note by extending it slightly beyond its normal time value.

Adjective

agogic (comparative more agogic, superlative most agogic)

  1. Accentuating a note by extending it slightly beyond its normal time value.
    • On most early instruments, changes were made only at agogic pauses, caesuras, repeats or between sections.1974, Margery Halford, “Piano or Harpsichord?”, in François Couperin, translated by Margery Halford, L’Art de toucher le Clavecin (The Art of Playing the Harpsichord), 2nd edition, Alfred Publishing...
    • 6F is the longest-held cadence sonority (it has the most agogic emphasis), and ends very conclusively with the V₇-I-V₇-V-I chord progression.1978, Rhenda Ronfeldt Pease, An Analytical Study of Twentieth-Century Cadential Techniques, Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Michigan University, →OCLC, page 153

Noun

agogic (plural agogics)

  1. An accent that accentuates a note by extending it slightly beyond its normal time value.

Examples of agogic in a sentence

  • Obviously, extended melodies should end on the strongest and most agogic melodic cadence.1997, David Cope, “Extended Melodic Lines”, in Techniques of the Contemporary Composer, New York, N.Y.: Schirmer Books, →ISBN, chapter 3...
  • Timpanists need to be particularly aware of agogic accents because they often swallow up the smaller notes that precede them.2010, Steven L[aurence] Schweizer, “Musical Interpretation and the Timpanist”, in Timpani Tone and the Interpretation of Baroque and...

Forms of agogic

Adjective
comparativemore agogic
superlativemost agogic
Noun
pluralagogics

Origin of agogic

Apparently from German Agoge (“tempo”), from Ancient Greek ἀγωγή (agōgḗ, “carrying, leading, reduplicated formation; tempo”), + -ic, after German agogisch. By surface analysis, agoge + -ic.

Questions about agogic

What does agogic mean?
Agogic means accentuating a note by extending it slightly beyond its normal time value.
How do you use agogic in a sentence?
Obviously, extended melodies should end on the strongest and most agogic melodic cadence.
What part of speech is agogic?
Agogic can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near agogic in the dictionary

  1. agogare
  2. agoge
  3. agoges
  4. agoggle
  5. agoggled
  6. agogic
  7. agogics
  8. agogo
  9. agogo bell
  10. agogo bells
  11. agogos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: agogic (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “agogic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/agogic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.