Word.ws English Dictionary

contrafact

contrafact noun: a new musical composition built out of an already existing one, most often a new melody overlaid on a familiar harmonic structure. An important part of the development of bebop. Contrafacts are not to be confused with musical quotations, which borrow rhythms or melodies from an existing composition.

Noun

contrafact (plural contrafacts)

  1. A new musical composition built out of an already existing one, most often a new melody overlaid on a familiar harmonic structure. An important part of the development of bebop. Contrafacts are not to be confused with musical quotations, which borrow rhythms or melodies from an existing composition.

Forms of contrafact

pluralcontrafacts

Questions about contrafact

What does contrafact mean?
Contrafact means a new musical composition built out of an already existing one, most often a new melody overlaid on a familiar harmonic structure. An important part of the development of bebop. Contrafacts are not to be confused with musical quotations, which borrow rhythms or melodies from an existing composition.
What part of speech is contrafact?
Contrafact is a noun.
What is the plural of contrafact?
The plural of contrafact is contrafacts.

Words near contrafact in the dictionary

  1. contradistinguishes
  2. contradistinguishing
  3. contradistinguisht
  4. contraexpectation
  5. contraexpectational
  6. contrafact
  7. contrafacta
  8. contrafactive
  9. contrafacts
  10. contrafactual
  11. contrafactum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: contrafact (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.

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