JAZZ • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Jazz

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/dʒæz/ Listen

noun

jazz n.

A type of music that originated in New Orleans around 1900 and developed through increasingly complex styles, but generally featuring intricate rhythms, improvisation, prominent solo segments, and great freedom in harmonic idiom played frequently in a polyphonic style, on various instruments including horn, saxophone, piano and percussion, but rarely stringed instruments.

Empty or insincere or exaggerated talk; as, don't give me any of that jazz.

Synonyms: wind, idle words, nothingness.

A style of dance music popular in the 1920s; similar to New Orleans jazz but played by large bands.

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Etymology of 'Jazz'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Jazz" Quotes from Famous Books

... explain, as Cannon suggests, the more obscure phenomena of religious frenzy such as the ceremonial dances of savages, the "Danse Macabre" of the Middle Ages, the feats of the whirling dervishes, the jumping and shouting of revivalism; also, maybe, the modern jazz.] ...

— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... dances given on the same evening, and he likes to drift from one to the other just as he likes to drift from one partner to another, or not dance at all if he does not want to. A man who writes himself down for the tenth jazz must be eagerly appearing on the stroke of the first bar. Or if he does not engage his partners busily at the opening of the evening, he can not dance at all—he may not want to, but he hates not ...

— Etiquette • Emily Post

... had to "rough it;" and the conditions governing a voyage from India to England were very different from those that now obtain. None of the modern amenities had any place in the accepted routine. Thus, no deck sports; no jazz band; no swimming-pool; no cocktail bar; not even a sweepstake on the ...

— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... listening to the radio—he is fond of good jazz—and driving out in the country. He loves speed. An American friend who some years ago accompanied him on a motor trip from Milan to Venice groaned when the speedometer began hovering around 78. "What's the matter with ...

— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... tied up till Larry comes." Barney turned back to Maggie. "I say, sister, how about robing yourself in your raiment of joy and coming with yours truly to a palace of jazz, there to dine and show the populace what ...

— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

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