common time

1. 1.

   a time signature indicating four beats to the bar

   Synonymsfour-four timequadruple timecommon measure

   Broadermusical time

Questions about common time

What does common time mean?

common time means "a time signature indicating four beats to the bar".

What is another word for common time?

Close synonyms include four-four time, quadruple time, common measure. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is common time a common word?

common time is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.