semibreve
/ˈsɛmɪbɹiːv/noun
semibreve is a noun meaning “A musical note four beats long in 4/4 time; a whole note (US)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-E-M-I-B-R-E-V-E, and it appears about once in every 95 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of semibreve is semibreves.
What does semibreve mean?
noun
- 1
CommonwealthIrelandUKA musical note four beats long in 4/4 time; a whole note (US)
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce semibreve?
- /ˈsɛmɪbɹiːv/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-semibreve.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of semibreve
- semibreves plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is semibreve?
Semibreve appears about once in every 95 million words in written English, the 313,259th 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).
Semibreve in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense whole note:
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 semibreve come from?
From Italian semibreve, ultimately from Latin semi- (“half”) and Latin brevis (“short”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).