Word.ws English Dictionary

portamento

UK/pɔːtəˈmɛntəʊ/

portamento noun: a smooth, gliding transition from one note to another; used especially with stringed instruments, and sometimes on brass.

Noun

portamento (plural portamentos or portamenti)

  1. A smooth, gliding transition from one note to another; used especially with stringed instruments, and sometimes on brass.
    • The music was feral, Eastern in scale, flattened seconds and sixths, and a kind of fretless portamento between2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage, published 2007, page 945

Forms of portamento

pluralportamentos
pluralportamenti

Origin of portamento

From Italian portamento, from portare (“bear, carry”).

Words formed from portamento

Questions about portamento

What does portamento mean?
Portamento means a smooth, gliding transition from one note to another; used especially with stringed instruments, and sometimes on brass.
What part of speech is portamento?
Portamento is a noun.
How do you pronounce portamento?
Portamento is pronounced /pɔːtəˈmɛntəʊ/ (UK).
What is the plural of portamento?
The plural of portamento is portamentos.

Words near portamento in the dictionary

  1. portaloo
  2. portaloos
  3. portals
  4. portalvenous
  5. portamenti
  6. portamento
  7. portamentoed
  8. portamentos
  9. portance
  10. Portanova
  11. Portanovas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: portamento (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.

Last updated:

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