CADENCE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Cadence

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/kˈeɪdəns/ Listen

noun

Cadence n.

1.

The act or state of declining or sinking. (Obs.) "Now was the sun in western cadence low."

2.

A fall of the voice in reading or speaking, especially at the end of a sentence.

3.

A rhythmical modulation of the voice or of any sound; as, music of bells in cadence sweet. "Blustering winds, which all night long Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull Seafaring men o'erwatched." "The accents... were in passion's tenderest cadence."

4.

Rhythmical flow of language, in prose or verse. "Golden cadence of poesy." "If in any composition much attention was paid to the flow of the rhythm, it was said (at least in the 14th and 15th centuries) to be "prosed in faire cadence.""

5.

(Her.) See Cadency.

6.

(Man.) Harmony and proportion in motions, as of a well-managed horse.

7.

(Mil.) A uniform time and place in marching.

8.

(Mus.)

(a)

The close or fall of a strain; the point of rest, commonly reached by the immediate succession of the tonic to the dominant chord.

(b)

A cadenza, or closing embellishment; a pause before the end of a strain, which the performer may fill with a flight of fancy.

Imperfect cadence. (Mus.) See under Imperfect.

verb

Cadence v. t. To regulate by musical measure. "These parting numbers, cadenced by my grief."

See images of 'Cadence'

Etymology of 'Cadence'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Cadence" Quotes from Famous Books

... do? It's every bit as bad for us as it is for you, and you can rest assured that we'll do all we can." As if the cadence of his last sentence were not sufficiently recognizable as a formula of dismissal, he picked up a letter that lay on his desk and began ...

— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin

... muffled coo of defiance marred the stillness of the night. The gurgling call of a moorhen, mingling with the ripple of the stream over the ford, came from the reeds at a distant bend of the river. Nearer, the river, with varying cadence, rose and fell in uneven current over a rocky shelf, and then came on to murmur around me while I waded towards the edge of a deep, forbidding pool. In the smooth back-wash beyond the black cup of the pool a mass of gathered ...

— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... and over again she sang with a wavering cadence, incoherently sometimes, but always with tender pleading, something about "where the stream was a-flowin', the gentle kine lowin', and over my grave keep the ...

— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... to Robert Boyle, whose Sceptical Chymist set the cadence for subsequent research based upon the "mechanical or corpuscularian" philosophy and quantitative procedures. It is appropriate for us, then, to terminate our discussion with a consideration of this current in English ...

— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... organ-loft, a few women were allowed to peep at what was going on. I was one of these exceptional characters. The exercises were in all the different languages under the sun. It would have been exceedingly interesting to hear them, one after the other, each in its peculiar cadence and inflection, but much of the individual expression was taken away by that general false academic tone which is sure to pervade such exhibitions where young men speak who have as yet nothing to say. It would have been different, indeed, ...

— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

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