Tempo

How to spell tempo

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tempo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tempo mean?

1. nounThe speed or pace at which something happens, especially the rate of a piece of music.

Tempo in a sentence

• The conductor set a brisk tempo for the opening movement.

• The team controlled the tempo of the match in the second half.

Where does tempo come from?

Language of origin: Italian

The word comes directly from Italian tempo, meaning 'time', which itself descends from the Latin tempus, the ordinary word for 'time' or 'a period of time'. Italian became the international language of music in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which is why so many performance terms (allegro, crescendo, piano) are Italian; tempo entered English in this musical sense in the early 1700s to describe the speed or pace at which a piece is played. From the concert hall the meaning widened into general use, so that today we speak of the tempo of a game, a meeting, or even a city. The Latin tempus also gives us 'temporary', 'temporal', and 'contemporary', all sharing the idea of time. The plural in strict musical writing is sometimes the Italian 'tempi', though the regular English 'tempos' is now perfectly standard.

How the word is built

• tempo (from Latin tempus: time)