Word.ws English Dictionary

col legno

UK/ˌkɒl ˈlɛnjəʊ//ˌkoʊl ˈleɪnjoʊ/

col legno adverb: a musical notation indicating that the strings of an instrument are to be struck with the wooden part of the bow.

Adverb

col legno (not comparable)

  1. A musical notation indicating that the strings of an instrument are to be struck with the wooden part of the bow.
    • Webern took particular care with the col legno passages. In the quiet ostinatos of the first and third pieces (which can be seen as parallel in many ways), he added weich gezogen (gently drawn) to the col legno indications.1996, Kathryn Bailey, editor, Webern Studies, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 156

Origin of col legno

Borrowed from Italian col legno (literally “with the wood”).

Questions about col legno

What does col legno mean?
Col legno means a musical notation indicating that the strings of an instrument are to be struck with the wooden part of the bow.
What part of speech is col legno?
Col legno is an adverb.
How do you pronounce col legno?
Col legno is pronounced /ˌkɒl ˈlɛnjəʊ/ (UK).

Words near col legno in the dictionary

  1. cokulorises
  2. Cokum
  3. Cokun
  4. coky
  5. col
  6. col legno
  7. Col's
  8. col-
  9. col.
  10. cola
  11. cola chicken

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: col legno (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-col legno.wav.

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