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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dissonant

Dissonant \Dis"so*nant\, a. [L. dissonans, -antis, p. pr. of dissonare to disagree in sound, be discordant; dis- + sonare to sound: cf. F. dissonant. See Sonant.]

  1. Sounding harshly; discordant; unharmonious.

    With clamor of voices dissonant and loud.
    --Longfellow.

  2. Disagreeing; incongruous; discrepant, -- with from or to. ``Anything dissonant to truth.''
    --South.

    What can be dissonant from reason and nature than that a man, naturally inclined to clemency, should show himself unkind and inhuman?
    --Hakewill.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
dissonant

early 15c., from Middle French dissonant and directly from Latin dissonantem (nominative dissonans), present participle of dissonare "differ in sound," from dis- "apart" (see dis-) + sonare "to sound" (see sonata).

Wiktionary
dissonant

a. Of or pertaining to dissonance.

WordNet
dissonant
  1. adj. not musical in nature; "the unmusical cry of the bluejay" [syn: unmusical, nonmusical] [ant: musical]

  2. characterized by musical dissonance; harmonically unresolved [syn: unresolved]

  3. lacking in harmony [syn: discordant, disharmonious, inharmonic]

Wikipedia
Dissonant

A dissonant is a dissonant note in music theory of consonance and dissonance. One of the early composers known for use of dissonants was Monteverdi. The use of dissonants was also practiced by Moscheles and taught by Chopin.

Usage examples of "dissonant".

I awoke as so often during my life to the sound of warming-up chromatics and wrist-loosening arpeggios, and lay lazily in bed listening to her pick her way phrase by phrase through a dissonant modern score, repeating and repeating each section until she was satisfied she knew it, until the notes flowed easily in their intended order.

They had scored the entire album with dissonant bluesy riffs from Marblehead Johnson.

Concepts of atonality, dissonant harmony, computer-generated composition .

Concepts of atonality, dissonant harmony, computer-generated composition.

Forget monody and basso continuo, surround yourself in strange dissonant harmonies, in an exotic perfume for the listening.

Inside the house a well-proportioned woman wearing only a pair of black bikini bottoms descended the spiral staircase into a living room whose aggressive decor, southwestern antiseptic, was defiled by a single dissonant note: the vulgar design of the magazine cover lying carelessly atop her polished glass cocktail table.

Scraggly cabbage palms start mixing with the pine as you get farther south, and the mix of conifer and palm is dissonant in a bad-dream sort of way.

By setting up the dissonant energy pattern in the past of one fractural plane, you utterly destroy at least one future, possibly both.

Splintered bushes exploded upward from their bases, and the roaring swelled into a dissonant chord: the sound of a hundred harmonicas being blown at once.

He began to hear the skirl of pipers tuning as he followed Dhugal down the newel stair and along the passage toward the castle's great hall - dissonant and whining at first, but then catching and carrying a traditional border air, one of the few he knew.

The harp gave one last dissonant chord as the wind of its descent strummed the strings.