crescendo

crescendo

1. A crescendo, which in Italian means ‘growing’ (from Latin crescere ‘to grow’), is originally a term in music for a gradual increase in loudness or force, or a passage played in this way. From this it developed an extended meaning referring to other cumulative increases in force or effect:

• His second-in-command at the Embassy…was unrattled by the crescendo of disaster to the allied cause —J. Colville, 1976.

In the 1920s, and apparently first in AmE, it developed further to mean the result rather than the process of increasing, and has been widely used as a synonym for peak or climax, notably in phrases such as reach (or rise to) a crescendo:

• In the past week, as the date approached for the annual review of her detention order, international pressure reached a crescendo —Independent, 2007.

The newer use lies in disputed territory, and is likely to prevail as the more commonly required meaning, despite the availability of alternatives such as apogee, climax, culmination, peak, pinnacle, and summit.

2. The plural is crescendos. Crescendo is occasionally used as a verb meaning ‘to increase in loudness or intensity’, and has inflected forms crescendoes, crescendoed, crescendoing.