ritardando
adverb, adjective, noun
ritardando is an adverb meaning “Gradually decelerating the tempo of a piece of music, especially at the end of the piece” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-I-T-A-R-D-A-N-D-O, and it appears about once in every 78 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does ritardando mean?
adverb
- 1
Gradually decelerating the tempo of a piece of music, especially at the end of the piece.
adjective
- 1
Having a gradually decelerating tempo.
noun
- 1
An instance of gradually decelerating the tempo of a piece of music.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of ritardando
- rit
- ritardandos plural
- ritardandi plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is ritardando?
Ritardando appears about once in every 78 million words in written English, the 279,513th 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).
How do you abbreviate ritardando?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of ritardando: rit.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Where does ritardando come from?
Borrowed from Italian ritardando, gerund of ritardare (“to delay, to slow down”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).