Art & MusicGreek → English
Baritone
/ˈbærɪtoʊn/noun
A male singing voice between bass and tenor, or a singer with one.
The Greek roots
βαρύς
barýs
heavy, deep
τόνος
tónos
pitch, tension
Literally: “heavy-toned”
The story of the word
Grammarians got there before singers. βαρύτονος described a word whose final syllable carries no acute accent, the pitch falling away at the end, and Greek accentuation was a matter of pitch rather than stress. Italian baritono carried the word into English in the seventeenth century for the voice that sits in the middle, which is why most opera villains and most fathers are baritones. The heavy half turns up again in barometer, weight of air, and in baryon, the heavy class of particle.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Italian → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
barometerbaryonisobarmonotone
In a sentence
He sang baritone in the church choir for thirty years and never learned to read music.