diatonic scale

1. 1.

   a scale with eight notes in an octave; all but two are separated by whole tones

   Broaderscale

   Narrowermode

Questions about diatonic scale

What does diatonic scale mean?

diatonic scale means "a scale with eight notes in an octave; all but two are separated by whole tones".

Is diatonic scale a common word?

diatonic scale 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.