Adjacent Words

Dissonance definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

DISSONANCE, n. [L., to be discordant; to sound.]
1. Discord; a mixture or union of harsh, unharmonious sounds, which are grating or unpleasing to the ear; as the dissonance of notes, sounds or numbers.
2. Disagreement.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a conflict of people's opinions or actions or characters [syn: disagreement, dissension, dissonance] [ant: accord, agreement]
2: the auditory experience of sound that lacks musical quality; sound that is a disagreeable auditory experience; "modern music is just noise to me" [syn: noise, dissonance, racket]
3: disagreeable sounds [ant: harmony]

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: 15th century 1. a. lack of agreement; especially inconsistency between the beliefs one holds or between one's actions and one's beliefs — compare cognitive dissonance b. an instance of such inconsistency or disagreement 2. a mingling of discordant sounds; especially a clashing or unresolved musical interval or chord

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Dissonance Dis"so*nance, n. [L. dissonantia: cf. F. dissonance.] 1. A mingling of discordant sounds; an inharmonious combination of sounds; discord. Filled the air with barbarous dissonance. --Milton. 2. Want of agreement; incongruity. --Milton.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

Dissonance is a lack of agreement or harmony between things. (FORMAL) = discord

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Discord, discordance, harshness, jarring, want of harmony. 2. Disagreement, inconsistency, incongruity, discrepancy.

Moby Thesaurus

antagonism, argumentation, atonalism, atonality, cacophony, clashing, clinker, conflict, contention, contradiction, contrariety, contrast, controversy, departure, deviation, difference, disaccord, disaccordance, disagreement, disconformity, discongruity, discord, discordance, discordancy, discrepancy, discreteness, disharmony, disparity, dissension, dissent, dissidence, dissimilarity, dissonancy, dissonant chord, distinction, distinctness, disunion, disunity, divergence, divergency, diversity, faction, far cry, flatness, heterogeneity, inaccordance, incompatibility, incongruity, inconsistency, inconsonance, inequality, inharmoniousness, inharmony, irreconcilability, jarring, mixture, negation, nonconformity, odds, off note, opposition, oppugnancy, otherness, repugnance, separateness, sharpness, sour note, sourness, stridor, strife, tunelessness, unconformity, unharmoniousness, unlikeness, unmusicality, unorthodoxy, untunefulness, variance, variation, variegation, variety, wolf