Word.ws English Dictionary

ground bass

ground bass noun: a constantly repeated bassline or harmonic pattern in a piece.

Noun

ground bass (countable and uncountable, plural ground basses)

  1. A constantly repeated bassline or harmonic pattern in a piece.
    • In classical music there are, as the analytical programs tell us, first subjects and second subjects, free fantasias, recapitulations, and codas; there are fugues, with counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal points; there are passacaglias on ground basses, canons ad hypodiapente, and other...1902 [1898], [George] Bernard Shaw, The Perfect Wagnerite […] , second edition, London: Grant Richards, page 3
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see ground, bass.
    Synonyms:
    basso ostinato

Synonyms of ground bass

Forms of ground bass

pluralground basses
alternative formgroundbass

Questions about ground bass

What does ground bass mean?
Ground bass means a constantly repeated bassline or harmonic pattern in a piece.
What part of speech is ground bass?
Ground bass is a noun.
What is the plural of ground bass?
The plural of ground bass is ground basses.

Words near ground bass in the dictionary

  1. ground ball with eyes
  2. ground balls
  3. ground balls with eyes
  4. ground bar
  5. ground bars
  6. ground bass
  7. ground basses
  8. ground beef
  9. ground beefs
  10. ground beetle
  11. ground beetles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ground bass (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: “ground bass.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ground_bass. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.