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Thursday Word: Gamut
May. 23rd, 2024 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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gamut (GAM-uht) - n., the entire scale or range (of something); including specifically, a) the whole series of recognized musical notes, b) all the colors that can be presented by a device such as a monitor or printer.
Originally, a single note -- and this story will take a while. In medieval Western Europe, the names of the notes of the scale were ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, after the first syllables of successive lines of a hymn to John the Baptist*, which walked up the scale. (Later, ut became do, for reasons I haven't tracked down, and si became ti.) The 11th century music theorist Guido d’Arezzo used Greek letters to name the lines on the staff, with gamma being the lowest line of the bass staff -- which gave the lowest possible note over all scales the name gamma ut, which in Middle English was shortened to gam(m)ut. At some point, still medieval times, the gamut came to mean not the lowest note of the scale, but the whole scale, and by further extension, any sort of complete range. The color gamut is a specific usage, which is both technical and seems to be largely British English usage.
* In full:
Ut queant laxis
resonare fibris
Mira gestorum
famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti
labii reatum,
Sancte Iohannes
---L.
Originally, a single note -- and this story will take a while. In medieval Western Europe, the names of the notes of the scale were ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, after the first syllables of successive lines of a hymn to John the Baptist*, which walked up the scale. (Later, ut became do, for reasons I haven't tracked down, and si became ti.) The 11th century music theorist Guido d’Arezzo used Greek letters to name the lines on the staff, with gamma being the lowest line of the bass staff -- which gave the lowest possible note over all scales the name gamma ut, which in Middle English was shortened to gam(m)ut. At some point, still medieval times, the gamut came to mean not the lowest note of the scale, but the whole scale, and by further extension, any sort of complete range. The color gamut is a specific usage, which is both technical and seems to be largely British English usage.
* In full:
Ut queant laxis
resonare fibris
Mira gestorum
famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti
labii reatum,
Sancte Iohannes
---L.
