Word.ws English Dictionary

ostinato

/ɒstɪˈnɑtoʊ/

ostinato noun: a piece of melody, a chord progression, or a bass figure that is repeated over and over as a musical accompaniment.

Noun

ostinato (plural ostinatos or ostinati)

  1. A piece of melody, a chord progression, or a bass figure that is repeated over and over as a musical accompaniment.
    • The piece moves in alluring spans of swirling figures, jagged lines and pointillistic outbursts, often prodded forward by ostinatos in the perky piano.2009 January 26, Anthony Tommasini, “Pricking Up the Ears to Listen for Echoes of California”, in New York Times

Forms of ostinato

pluralostinatos
pluralostinati

Origin of ostinato

From Italian ostinato (“stubborn”). Doublet of obstinate.

Questions about ostinato

What does ostinato mean?
Ostinato means a piece of melody, a chord progression, or a bass figure that is repeated over and over as a musical accompaniment.
What part of speech is ostinato?
Ostinato is a noun.
How do you pronounce ostinato?
Ostinato is pronounced /ɒstɪˈnɑtoʊ/.
What is the plural of ostinato?
The plural of ostinato is ostinatos.

Words near ostinato in the dictionary

  1. ostikan
  2. ostikanate
  3. ostikanates
  4. ostikans
  5. ostinati
  6. ostinato
  7. ostinatos
  8. ostiola
  9. ostiolar
  10. ostiolate
  11. ostiole

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ostinato (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-ostinato.wav.

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