Word.ws English Dictionary

obligato

obligato is the alternative spelling of obbligato.

Meaning of obbligato

Noun

obbligato (plural obbligatos or obbligati)

  1. An obbligato section; a prominent countermelody, often written to be played or sung above the principal theme (in a higher pitch range).
    • The noise of the traffic outside the building on the boulevard made an unmusical obbligato to my thinking.1953, Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, Penguin, published 2010, page 281

Forms of obligato

pluralobligatos
pluralobligati

Questions about obligato

What is obligato the alternative spelling of?
Obligato is the alternative spelling of obbligato.

Words near obligato in the dictionary

  1. obligation
  2. obligational
  3. obligations
  4. obligative
  5. obligativeness
  6. obligato
  7. obligator
  8. obligatorification
  9. obligatorifications
  10. obligatorily
  11. obligatoriness

Source and license

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