gradus

noun, plural gra·dus·es. Music.

a work consisting wholly or in part of exercises of increasing difficulty.

Origin:
< Latin: grade, step

Dictionary.com Unabridged

noun, plural gra·dus·es.

a dictionary of prosody, especially one that gives word quantities and poetic phrases and that is intended to aid students in the writing of Latin and Greek verse.

Origin:
1755–65; after Gradus ad Parnassum (a step to Parnassus), Latin title of a dictionary of prosody much used in English public schools during the 18th and 19th centuries

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Gradus is always a great word to know.

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a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

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.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

gradus (ˈɡreɪdəs)

—n , pl -duses
1.	a book of études or other musical exercises arranged in order of increasing difficulty
2.	prosody a dictionary or textbook of prosody for use in writing Latin or Greek verse

[C18: shortened from Latin Gradus ad Parnassum a step towards Parnassus, a dictionary of prosody used in the 18th and 19th centuries]

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

Encyclopedia

gradus

a dictionary of Greek or Latin prosody and poetic phrases used as an aid in the writing of verse in Greek or Latin. The term is derived from the Gradus ad Parnassum ("A Step to Parnassus"), a 17th-century prosody dictionary long used in British schools.

Learn more about gradus with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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-Vladimir Nabokov

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