Other forms: crescendos
A crescendo is music getting louder and louder — the strings coming in, the drums rising under them, the whole orchestra swelling towards something. On the page it is a long thin wedge opening to the right.
Away from music, a crescendo is any steady rise in noise or intensity: the crescendo of rain on a tin roof, a crescendo of complaints on the second day. Here is the argument worth knowing about. Careful writers hold that a crescendo IS the rise and not the peak, so reach a crescendo irritates them; build to a climax, or simply grow, keeps everyone happy. Everyone else has said reach a crescendo for a century and will carry on. The opposite word is diminuendo, and crescendo works as a verb too: the applause crescendoed as she came back on.
1nouncrescendoA passage of music that grows steadily louder.
“The crescendo builds for eight bars and then everything drops away.”
2nounsoundA steady rise in loudness or intensity towards a peak.
“The rain reached a crescendo on the tin roof and then eased off.”
3verbgrowTo grow steadily louder.
“The chanting crescendoed until the referee blew the whistle.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Crescendo is Italian, and it is a verb form rather than a noun: the gerund of crescere, to grow, so the word means growing. Italian supplied the whole vocabulary of Western music — piano, forte, allegro — and this one came in with the rest. Behind crescere sits a Proto-Indo-European root *ḱer-, grow, which also feeds crescent and increase.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱer- (grow)
Italian
crescendo
English, today
crescendo
Built from
Italian crescendo, gerund of crescere (“to grow, to increase”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA