Gamut
//ˈɡæm.ət// noun
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A (normally) complete range.
"I must begin with rudiments of Art / To teach you gamoth in a briefer sort, - - Bian. Why, I am past my gamouth long agoe."
- 2 a complete extent or range: wordnet
- 3 All the notes in a musical scale.
- 4 the entire scale of musical notes wordnet
- 5 All the colours that can be presented by a device such as a monitor or printer.
Example
More examples"Here's an example of a semantic gamut: non-existent, unique, rare, uncommon, common, trite, worn-out, universal."
Etymology
1520s, original sense “lowest note of musical scale”, contraction of Medieval Latin gamma ut, from gamma (“Greek letter, corresponding to the musical note G”) + ut (“first solfège syllable, now replaced by do”). In modern terms, “G do” – the first note of the G scale. Meaning later extended to mean all the notes of a scale, and then more generally any complete range.
Related phrases
More for "gamut"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.