CHROMATIC • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Chromatic

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adjective

Chromatic adj.

Relating to color, or to colors.

(Mus.) Proceeding by the smaller intervals (half steps or semitones) of the scale, instead of the regular intervals of the diatonic scale. Note: The intermediate tones were formerly written and printed in colors.

Chromatic aberration. (Opt.) See Aberration, 4.

Chromatic printing, printing from type or blocks covered with inks of various colors.

Chromatic scale (Mus.), the scale consisting of thirteen tones, including the eight scale tones and the five intermediate tones.

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Etymology of 'Chromatic'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Chromatic" Quotes from Famous Books

... sea that is notoriously evil. At twilight the wind dropped, the heave of the waters decreased. The scattered fleet, gliding through the hush, carried red, green, and white planets. The ships which lay in the western glow were black and simple shapes. Those to the east of us were remarkable with a chromatic prominence, and you thought, while watching them, that till that moment you had not really seen them. Presently the moon cleared the edge of the sea, a segment of frozen light, and moored to our stern with a quivering, ...

— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... minutes, Miss Warburton, by dint of opening parcels, had transformed the bedroom into a composite of the principal men's shops in Piccadilly and Bond Street. Mr. Prohack recoiled before the chromatic show and also before the prospect of ...

— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... chord combinations since the introduction of the tempered system is not very great. All, or nearly all, the chords used by Wagner are to be found in the works of Bach. The suggestion to explain Wagner's harmonies by assuming a "chromatic scale" rests upon a misapprehension of the nature of a scale. Every scale implies a tonality, i.e. a tonic note, to which all the other notes bear some definite numerical relation. There cannot be a chromatic scale in the scientific sense in music; what we call by that name in a keyed instrument ...

— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... aquarium in Honolulu, which is like a pelagic rainbow factory, and the aquarium in New York with all its strange and beautiful denizens, I am a little ashamed of our English apathy. To maintain picture galleries, where, however beautiful and chromatic, all is dead, and be insensitive to the loveliness of fish, in hue, in shape and in ...

— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... institution or another'; 'the great aim of his life was to make the music he wrote an interpretation of the words it was set to'; he 'broke many of the laws of music'; he 'considerable altered the stage'; he 'was noted for using many instruments not invented before'; in his 'composition he used the chromatic scale very much, and goes very deep in harmony'; he 'was the first taking up the style, and therefore to make a great change in music'; he was 'the cause of much censure and bickering through his writings'; ...

— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley

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