Definition of "glissando" [glis•san•do]

• Music A rapid slide through a series of consecutive tones in a scalelike passage. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The technical operation known as glissando is peculiar to the harp alone."
• "I've read most of my trip book, Thomas Harlan's Wasteland of Flint, which is a kind of glissando Lovecraftian space opera set in an imperfectly realized alternate history in which the Aztecs conquered the world and run the human empire in space."
• "The strings are generally plucked with the fingers, but the peasants obtain charming "glissando" effects by sweeping the strings lightly one after the other with the fingers or side of the hand."