Home UK English gamut

Meaning of gamut in English:

gamut

Pronunciation /ˈɡamət/

See synonyms for gamut

Translate gamut into Spanish

noun

the gamut

  • 1The complete range or scope of something.

    ‘the whole gamut of human emotion’
    • ‘Anger, jealousy, possessiveness, suspicion, aggression - Harry experiences a whole gamut of human emotions, but seems to able to control them much better that he did in The Phoenix.’
    • ‘Her face could register the gamut of human emotions without ever fully revealing her inner nature.’
    • ‘These stories take you on an exciting journey, and you traverse a whole gamut of human experience and emotions that reflect the changing Tamil milieu.’
    • ‘When you examine the gamut of social activities humans engage in, from sports to competitions for attention, it does indeed seem that humans are not able to rise above a competitive mindset.’
    • ‘The opinions ranged the gamut, from panic to indifference, many with steadfastness and underlying optimism.’
    • ‘At which level do we start to form various cognitive types that reflect the gamut of human potential?’
    • ‘In Russian there is a much kinder word, you simply say ‘not beautiful’, ‘unbeautiful’ and that leaves you with the whole gamut of unbeautiful, from hideous to rather plain.’
    • ‘He intends to meet residents to find out what their priorities are, then hopes to apply to a whole gamut of funding initiatives including the National Lottery money, Education Action Zone cash, New Deal for Communities money and others.’
    • ‘Santiago being a pilgrimage town, I fully expect there to be the whole gamut of Catholic tat merchandise: illuminated Pope busts, candles shaped like burning pyres, replicas of fragments of the true cross, and so on and so forth.’
    • ‘‘These are highly selective patients who have been through the whole gamut of drugs and this therapy gives them an alternative to getting worse - it gives people a lifeline,’ he said.’
    • ‘We're here to offer advice across the whole gamut of financial services.’
    • ‘She also recommends researching the publishers who would be suitable, since publishing houses run the whole gamut from highly specialized to general houses to the academic university presses.’
    • ‘Various options were put up for reflection covering the whole gamut from doing nothing at all to farming the market out to the edge of the town and many other ideas in between including making the High Street pedestrians only.’
    • ‘This underlines the new Government's commitment to a whole gamut of policies that would take care of agriculture and the concerns of farmers as well as other poorer and weaker sections.’
    • ‘Students, it seems, are getting too busy to, well, be students, when we consider that word as gesturing toward the whole gamut of traditional student experiences.’
    • ‘An agenda that can countervail the one-line simple answers of said ‘conservatives’ that encompass the whole gamut of public policy.’
    • ‘Apart from the damage to business, the focus will range from the drive to bring down the cost of motor insurance to the whole gamut of how insurance problems affects every sector of the community.’
    • ‘The full gamut of human misbehaviour, you'll learn, ranges from crudely hilarious to profoundly disturbing.’
    • ‘The dishes covered the gamut of culinary endeavour from Guinness-and-lamb stew to salmon with tandoori spices.’
    • ‘He covers the gamut of aesthetic surgery, from the initial consultation through postoperative recovery.’
    range, spectrum, span, sweep, compass, scope, area, breadth, width, reach, extent, catalogue, scale, sequence, series
    View synonyms

  • 2Music
    A complete scale of musical notes; the range of a voice or instrument.

    ‘the orchestral gamut’
    • ‘The older corpus tended to treat E and B as notes of secondary importance, but later chants frequently contain passages that use all notes of the gamut equally freely; they also appear to emphasize interlocking chains of 3rds.’
    • ‘A strong keyboard technique is called for, with high priority on the ability to vary tonal color to suggest the full orchestral gamut.’
    1. 2.1historical A scale consisting of seven overlapping hexachords, containing all the recognized notes used in medieval music, covering almost three octaves from bass G to treble E.
      • ‘The corresponding framework for medieval music is the diatonic gamut from G2 to E5, with B-flat3 and B-flat4.’
    2. 2.2historical The lowest note in the gamut scale.
      • ‘Part-music of this period tends to employ the alto-baritone range of pitches, and the usual tuning of this harp began at GG - the gamut, by convention the lowest note in vocal music.’

Phrases

    run the gamut

    • Experience, display, or perform the complete range of something.

      ‘Owen runs the gamut of emotions in the space of the film’
      • ‘In scheduling enough content to run the gamut of women's experiences, the festival has performed a balancing act.’
      • ‘This compilation offers a wide range of genres, running the gamut from garage rock through funk, new wave and electroclash to atmospheric rock, and even mellow jazz.’
      • ‘The conference planners negotiate special rates at a large number of area hotels that run the gamut of price ranges, and some very special deals are available.’
      • ‘Attendees' experiences ran the gamut from the leaps and gyrations in a fast-moving Dalcroze session to the thoughtful poignancy of an elder-education study and the stimulation of hearing about the latest brain research.’
      • ‘The vehicles on display ran the gamut of design and fit and finish.’
      • ‘Her performance runs the gamut from physical perfection to emotional exhaustion and she never falters.’
      • ‘As always, the performances run the gamut from pricey indoor shows to the multitude of free shows outdoors.’
      • ‘The media's preoccupation with body size runs the gamut from teen magazines to tabloids, the glossies and, yes, even broadsheets which should know better.’
      • ‘The food runs the gamut from solid and reliable to off the beaten path and utterly charming.’
      • ‘They run the gamut from callousness and cruelty to kindness and sorrow, with contrasting qualities often converging in the same incident or person.’

Origin

Late Middle English from medieval Latin gamma ut, originally the name of the lowest note in the medieval scale (bass G an octave and a half below middle C), then applied to the whole range of notes used in medieval music. The Greek letter Γ (gamma) was used for bass G, with ut indicating that it was the first note in the lowest of the hexachords or six-note scales (see solmization).