Word.ws English Dictionary

scherzo

Syllables: scher·zo/ˈskɛətsəʊ/US/ˈskɛəɹ(ˌ)tsoʊ/

scherzo noun: a piece of music or a movement from a larger piece such as a symphony; especially, a piece of music played in a playful manner.

Noun

scherzo (plural scherzos or scherzi)

  1. A piece of music or a movement from a larger piece such as a symphony; especially, a piece of music played in a playful manner.
    • At seven Val knocked – three shorts and one long, out of the scherzo of Beethoven’s Fifth – and I rushed to open.1980, Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers

Forms of scherzo

pluralscherzos
pluralscherzi

Origin of scherzo

Borrowed from Italian scherzo (“joke, play”), from scherzare (“to joke, jest”), from Lombardic *skerzan (“to jump merrily, enjoy oneself, jest”), from Proto-Germanic *skertaną (“to hop, jump”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kerǝd- (“to dance, jump”). Akin to Middle High German scherzen (“to frolic, jump merrily, hop up and down”) (modern German scherzen (“to joke”), Scherz), Norwegian skjerta (“to joke”).

Questions about scherzo

What does scherzo mean?
Scherzo means a piece of music or a movement from a larger piece such as a symphony; especially, a piece of music played in a playful manner.
What part of speech is scherzo?
Scherzo is a noun.
How do you pronounce scherzo?
Scherzo is pronounced /ˈskɛətsəʊ/ (UK).
What is the plural of scherzo?
The plural of scherzo is scherzos.

Words near scherzo in the dictionary

  1. scherzandos
  2. scherzi
  3. scherzini
  4. scherzino
  5. scherzinos
  6. scherzo
  7. scherzos
  8. schesis
  9. schesis onomaton
  10. schetic
  11. Schetland

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scherzo (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-scherzo.wav.

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