Pentatonic

The story of the word

Five notes to the octave, the scale sitting on the black keys of a piano, and it turns up independently in Chinese court music, West African song, Scottish tunes and Andean flutes. Musicologists coined the term in the nineteenth century while trying to describe scales that European staff notation handled badly. πέντε is the five of pentagon and pentathlon, and of Pentecost, the fiftieth day.

How it travelled

Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English

First recorded

19th century