diapason

di·a·pa·son

[dahy-uh-pey-zuhn, -suhn]
noun Music.
1.
a full, rich outpouring of melodious sound.
2.
the compass of a voice or instrument.
3.
a fixed standard of pitch.
4.
either of two principal timbres or stops of a pipe organ, one of full, majestic tone (open diapason) and the other of strong, flutelike tone (stopped diapason)
5.
any of several other organ stops.
6.
a tuning fork.

Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English diapasoun < Latin diapāsōn the whole octave < Greek dià pāsôn (chordôn) through all (the notes), short for hē dià pāsôn chordôn symphōnía the concord through all the notes of the scale

di·a·pa·son·al, adjective
sub·di·a·pa·son, noun
sub·di·a·pa·son·al, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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00:10
Diapason is always a great word to know.
So is interrobang. Does it mean:
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
Collins
World English Dictionary
diapason (ˌdaɪəˈpeɪzən, -ˈpeɪsən) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide]
 
n
1.  either of two stops (open and stopped diapason) usually found throughout the compass of a pipe organ that give it its characteristic tone colour
2.  the compass of an instrument or voice
3.  chiefly in French usage
 a.  a standard pitch used for tuning, esp the now largely obsolete one of A above middle C = 435 hertz, known as diapason normal (French()
 b.  a tuning fork or pitch pipe
4.  (in classical Greece) an octave
 
[C14: from Latin: the whole octave, from Greek: () dia pasōn (khordōn sumphōnia) (concord) through all (the notes), from dia through + pas all]
 
dia'pasonal
 
adj
 
diapasonic
 
adj

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia

diapason

(from Greek dia pason chordon: "through all the strings"), in medieval music, the interval, or distance between notes, encompassing all degrees of the scale-i.e., the octave. In French, diapason indicates the range of a voice and is also the word for a tuning fork and for pitch

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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