Adjacent Words

Dominant definitions

	Tweet

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

DOMINANT, a. [L., to rule; lord, master; a house; to overcome, to subdue.]
1. Ruling; prevailing; governing; predominant; as the dominant party, or faction.
2. In music, the dominant or sensible chord is that which is practiced on the dominant of the tone, and which introduces a perfect cadence. Every perfect major chord becomes a dominant chord, as soon as the seventh minor is added to it.
DOMINANT, n. In music, of the three notes essential to the tone, the dominant is that which is a fifth from the tonic.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: exercising influence or control; "television plays a dominant role in molding public opinion"; "the dominant partner in the marriage" [ant: low-level, subordinate]
2: (of genes) producing the same phenotype whether its allele is identical or dissimilar [ant: recessive]
3: most frequent or common; "prevailing winds" [syn: prevailing, prevalent, predominant, dominant, rife] n
1: (music) the fifth note of the diatonic scale
2: an allele that produces the same phenotype whether its paired allele is identical or different [syn: dominant allele, dominant]

Merriam Webster's

I. adjective Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin dominant-, dominans, present participle of dominari Date: circa 1532 1. a. commanding, controlling, or prevailing over all others <the dominant culture> b. very important, powerful, or successful <a dominant theme> <a dominant industry> 2. overlooking and commanding from a superior position <a dominant hill> 3. of, relating to, or exerting ecological or genetic dominance 4. being the one of a pair of bodily structures that is the more effective or predominant in action <dominant eye> • dominantly adverb Synonyms: dominant, predominant, paramount, preponderant mean superior to all others in influence or importance. dominant applies to something that is uppermost because ruling or controlling <a dominant social class>. predominant applies to something that exerts, often temporarily, the most marked influence <a predominant emotion>. paramount implies supremacy in importance, rank, or jurisdiction <unemployment was the paramount issue in the campaign>. preponderant applies to an element or factor that outweighs all others in influence or effect <preponderant evidence in her favor>. II. noun Date: 1819 1. the fifth tone of a major or minor scale 2. a. a dominant genetic character or factor b. any of one or more kinds of organism (as a species) in an ecological community that exerts a controlling influence on the environment and thereby largely determines what other kinds of organisms are present c. a dominant individual in a social hierarchy

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. & n. --adj. 1 dominating, prevailing, most influential. 2 (of a high place) prominent, overlooking others. 3 a (of an allele) expressed even when inherited from only one parent. b (of an inherited characteristic) appearing in an individual even when its allelic counterpart is also inherited (cf. RECESSIVE). --n. Mus. the fifth note of the diatonic scale of any key. Derivatives: dominantly adv. Etymology: F f. L dominari (as DOMINATE)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Dominant Dom"i*nant, a. [L. dominans, -antis, p. pr. of dominari: cf. F. dominant. See Dominate.] Ruling; governing; prevailing; controlling; predominant; as, the dominant party, church, spirit, power. The member of a dominant race is, in his dealings with the subject race, seldom indeed fraudulent, . . . but imperious, insolent, and cruel. --Macaulay. Dominant estate or tenement (Law), the estate to which a servitude or easement is due from another estate, the estate over which the servitude extends being called the servient estate or tenement. --Bouvier. --Wharton's Law Dict. Dominant owner (Law), one who owns lands on which there is an easement owned by another. Syn: Governing; ruling; controlling; prevailing; predominant; ascendant.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Dominant Dom"i*nant, n. (Mus.) The fifth tone of the scale; thus G is the dominant of C, A of D, and so on. Dominant chord (Mus.), the chord based upon the dominant.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. Someone or something that is dominant is more powerful, successful, influential, or noticeable than other people or things. ...a change which would maintain his party's dominant position in Scotland... = pre-eminent ADJ 2. A dominant gene is one that produces a particular characteristic, whether a person has only one of these genes from one parent, or two genes, one from each parent. Compare recessive. (TECHNICAL) ADJ: usu ADJ n

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. Prevailing, ruling, predominant, predominating, ascendant, in the ascendant.

Moby Thesaurus

absolute, accidental, all-absorbing, arch, ascendant, assertive, at the head, authoritarian, authoritative, authorized, autocratic, average, banner, besetting, boss, breve, capital, cardinal, central, champion, chief, clothed with authority, cock, commanding, common, competent, conquering, consequential, considerable, controlling, crotchet, crowning, current, defeating, demisemiquaver, dominant note, double whole note, duly constituted, eighth note, eminent, empowered, enharmonic, enharmonic note, epidemic, ex officio, first, flat, flushed with success, focal, foremost, general, governing, great, half note, head, headmost, hegemonic, hegemonistic, hemidemisemiquaver, highest, imperative, important, in ascendancy, in charge, in chief, in the ascendant, influential, key, key signature, keynote, leading, magisterial, main, major, major key, master, mediant, mighty, minim, minor, momentous, monocratic, musical note, natural, normal, note, number, official, on the throne, ordinary, outstanding, overbearing, overcoming, overriding, overruling, pandemic, paramount, patent note, pedal point, popular, potent, powerful, predominant, predominate, predominating, preeminent, premier, prepollent, preponderant, preponderate, prepotent, prestigious, prevailing, prevalent, primal, primary, prime, principal, prominent, puissant, quarter note, quaver, rampant, ranking, regnant, regulating, regulative, regulatory, reigning, report, responding note, rife, routine, ruling, running, semibreve, semiquaver, senior, shaped note, sharp, sixteenth note, sixty-fourth note, sovereign, spiccato, staccato, standard, star, stellar, stereotyped, subdominant, submediant, substantial, subtonic, successful, supereminent, superior, supertonic, supreme, surpassing, sustained note, swaying, tercet, thirty-second note, tonality, tone, tonic, tonic key, topflight, topmost, totalitarian, transcendent, triplet, triumphal, triumphant, uppermost, usual, vanquishing, victorious, weighty, whole note, winning