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With the song “Do-Re-Mi,” the 1965 musical film The Sound of Music (adapted from the 1958 stage musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein) introduced millions of non-musicians to solfège, the singing of the sol-fa syllables—do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti—to teach the tones of a musical scale. Centuries earlier, however, the do in “Do-Re-Mi” was known as ut. Indeed, the first note on the scale of Guido d’Arezzo, an 11th century musician and monk who had his own way of applying syllables to musical tones, was ut. d’Arezzo also called the first line of his bass staff gamma, which meant that gamma ut was the term for a note written on the first staff line. In time, gamma ut underwent a shortening to gamut, and later its meaning expanded first to cover all the notes of d’Arezzo’s scale, then to cover all the notes in the range of an instrument, and, eventually, to cover an entire range of any sort.
Examples of gamut in a Sentence
Julie Seabaugh, Los Angeles Times, 28 Oct. 2024
This particular monitor excels in delivering vibrant, accurate colors with its IPS panel and 99% sRGB color gamut, ensuring a crisp and bright image from virtually any viewing angle.
—Shubham Yewale, PCMAG, 27 Sep. 2024
Additionally, the Hero 13 Black now supports a hybrid-log gamma HDR option with a wider color gamut, 10-bit depth, and Rec. 2100 color space, meeting broadcast HDR standards.
—Prakhar Khanna, Forbes, 26 Sep. 2024
Those categories cover the gamut from landscapes and portraits, abstract and conceptual images, to street and night photography.
—Michael Irving, New Atlas, 7 Sep. 2024
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Dictionary Entries Near gamut
Cite this Entry
“Gamut.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gamut. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
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gamut
noun
probably a contraction of gamma ut, a Latin expression in the Middle Ages for "the full range of notes in music," from gamma "the lowest note on the staff" and ut "the first note of the scale"
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