Word.ws English Dictionary

stretto

/ˈstɹɛtəʊ/

stretto noun: the presence of two close or overlapping statements of the subject of a fugue, especially towards the end.

Noun

stretto (countable and uncountable, plural strettos or stretti)

  1. The presence of two close or overlapping statements of the subject of a fugue, especially towards the end.
    • In classical music there are, as the analytical programs tell us, first subjects and second subjects, free fantasias, recapitulations, and codas; there are fugues, with counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal points; there are passacaglias on ground basses, canons ad hypodiapente, and other...1902 [1898], [George] Bernard Shaw, The Perfect Wagnerite […] , second edition, London: Grant Richards, page 3
  2. An acceleration in the tempo of an opera that produces an ending climax.

Adverb

stretto (not comparable)

  1. With gradually increasing speed.

Adjective

stretto (not comparable)

  1. Having gradually increasing speed.
    • So that over and above the public components – holidays, tourist attractions – there are private meanderings, linked to the climate as if this spell were a stretto passage in the year’s fugue: haphazard weather, aimless loves, unpredicted commitments…1960, Thomas Pynchon, Entropy

Forms of stretto

pluralstrettos
pluralstretti

Origin of stretto

Borrowed from Italian stretto. Doublet of strait and strict.

Words that rhyme with stretto

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about stretto

What does stretto mean?
Stretto means the presence of two close or overlapping statements of the subject of a fugue, especially towards the end.
What part of speech is stretto?
Stretto can be a noun, an adverb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce stretto?
Stretto is pronounced /ˈstɹɛtəʊ/.
What is the plural of stretto?
The plural of stretto is strettos.

Words near stretto in the dictionary

  1. stretchy
  2. Streten
  3. Stretford
  4. Stretham
  5. stretti
  6. stretto
  7. Stretton
  8. Stretton Westwood
  9. Stretton-on-Dunsmore
  10. Stretton-on-Fosse
  11. strettos

Source and license

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