Word.ws English Dictionary

gliss

gliss is the abbreviation of glissando.

Meaning of glissando

Noun

glissando (countable and uncountable, plural glissandi or glissandos or glissandoes)

  1. Either a continuous sliding from one pitch to another ("true" glissando), or an incidental scale played while moving from one melodic note to another ("effective" glissando).
    • After another alternation of the two elements, there is a more playful episode, in which flute and bassoon take up the first element, with swooping glissando on the ondes Martenot.2018, Robert Philip, The Classical Music Lover's Companion to Orchestral Music, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 465
  2. A method of playing an electric guitar in which a metal bar is held at right angles across the strings and rapidly moved up and down, creating a smooth, lush sound.

See all 3 meanings of glissando

Forms of gliss

Noun
pluralglisses
Verb
third-person singular presentglisses
present participleglissing
past participleglissed
pastglissed

Questions about gliss

What is gliss the abbreviation of?
Gliss is the abbreviation of glissando.

Words near gliss in the dictionary

  1. glisking
  2. glisks
  3. glisky
  4. glisolamide
  5. glisoxepide
  6. gliss
  7. glissade
  8. glissaded
  9. glissader
  10. glissaders
  11. glissades

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gliss (page history and authors); glissando (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: “gliss.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gliss. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.