countertenor
noun
countertenor is a noun meaning “An adult male singer who uses head tone or falsetto to sing far higher than the typical male vocal range” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-O-U-N-T-E-R-T-E-N-O-R and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 16 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of countertenor is countertenors.
What does countertenor mean?
noun
- 1
An adult male singer who uses head tone or falsetto to sing far higher than the typical male vocal range.
- 2
A male singing voice far higher than the typical male vocal range.
- 3
A part or section performing a countermelody against the tenor or main part.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce countertenor?
- US
Countertenor has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Wodencafe-countertenor.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of countertenor
- countertenors plural
- counter-tenor
- counter tenor
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is countertenor?
Countertenor appears about once in every 16 million words in written English, the 119,826th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Countertenor in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense adult male singer:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | contreténor |
| German | Countertenor |
| Portuguese | contratenor |
| Spanish | contratenor |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does countertenor come from?
From Latin contrātenor. By surface analysis, counter- + tenor.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).