dissonant

UK/ˈdɪsənənt/

adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,695 of 15,258leans written

Dissonant means clashing in sound or in feeling. A dissonant chord, dissonant voices, a dissonant note in the report.

In music what counts as dissonant has shifted enormously — intervals that scandalised the middle ages are ordinary now, so the word describes a relationship rather than a fixed fact. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort of holding two beliefs that clash.

Definitions of dissonant

1adjectivedissonantClashing in sound or in feeling.C2
“The pianist ended the piece on a harsh, dissonant chord that made the audience shiver.”

dissonant is a quality of clashing.

Where it comes from

Latin dissonans means disagreeing in sound — dis-, apart, plus sonare, to sound.

Middle French
dissonant
English, today
dissonant

From Middle French dissonant.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

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dissonant in the wild

A tension is an additional chord member that creates a relatively dissonant interval in relation to the bass.
Harmony
Typically, in the classical common practice period, a dissonant chord (chord with tension) "resolves" to a consonant chord.
Harmony
In 12 tet, the augmented sixth is equal to ten semitones, and is both nominally and audibly dissonant.
Augmented sixth
However, a finer consideration shows that the distinction forms a gradation, from the most consonant to the most dissonant.
Consonance and dissonance
When the trichord appears in works like Paul Hindemith's Ludus Tonalis, the dissonant semitone might be treated as an escape tone per traditional part writing rules.
Viennese trichord

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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