Word.ws English Dictionary

portato

portato adverb: in an unconnected manner, as opposed to legato, but not as short as staccato.

Adverb

portato

  1. In an unconnected manner, as opposed to legato, but not as short as staccato.

Noun

portato (plural portatos or portati)

  1. A mark in music notation indicating this style of playing.
  2. A passage having this mark.

Forms of portato

pluralportatos
pluralportati

Origin of portato

Borrowed from Italian portato, past participle of portare (“to bring, carry, bear”), from Latin portō.

Questions about portato

What does portato mean?
Portato means in an unconnected manner, as opposed to legato, but not as short as staccato.
What part of speech is portato?
Portato can be an adverb or a noun.

Words near portato in the dictionary

  1. portative
  2. portative organ
  3. portative organs
  4. portatives
  5. portativs
  6. portato
  7. portatos
  8. Portbou
  9. Portbury
  10. Portch
  11. Portches

Source and license

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