dramatic
adj/dɹəˈmætɪk/
Etymology Learned borrowing from Latin drāmaticus. By surface analysis, drama + -tic.
1
Of or relating to the drama.
- Monteverde found the conditions of dramatic music more favourable to his experiments than those of choral music, in which both voices and ears are at their highest sensibility to discord.1911, “Music”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:
- The Orestea is in effect one great single tragedy in three separate parts, each with its own dramatic purpose, yet harmonized by a common inspiration—three great acts of a drama, simple but complex; the whole, as its component members, showing unity of action in rise, crisis, and fall, and progressing in a series of like orderly stages toward a definite dramatic goal.1924, Herbert Weir Smyth, “VI. Orestea. I: Agamemnon”, in Aeschylean Tragedy, page 151:
2
Striking in appearance or effect.
- a dramatic view of the Alps
- Each year remarkable advances in prenatal medicine bring ever more dramatic confirmation of what common sense told us all along-that the child in the womb is simply what each of us once was: a very young, very small, dependent, vulnerable member of the human family.1986, Ronald Reagan, Proclamation 5430:
2 more examples
- Poland has made some dramatic gains in education in the past decade.2013 August 17, “Best and brightest”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8849:
- Johns Hopkins laying off more than 2,000 workers after dramatic cut in USAID funding […] Daniels warned in the message that the dramatic cut in USAID funding will result in “impacts to budgets, personnel, and programs.”2025 March 13, Kaanita Iyer, “Johns Hopkins laying off more than 2,000 workers after dramatic cut in USAID funding”, in edition.cnn.com:
3
Having a powerful, expressive singing voice.
4
Informal Tending to exaggerate in order to get attention.
- You're not bleeding out; the knife barely scratched your skin. Stop being so dramatic!
- Derived terms
36 terms
antidramatic, cyberdramatic, dramastic, dramatically, dramatic beat, dramatic irony, dramaticism, dramaticity, dramatic license, dramaticness, Dramatic Prakrit, dramatic present, dramatic soprano, dramatic structure, dramaticule, dramatic unity, dramatism, hyperdramatic, metadramatic, microdramatic, monodramatic, musicodramatic, nondramatic, overdramatic, photodramatic, postdramatic, protodramatic, pseudodramatic, psychodramatic, semidramatic, sociodramatic, superdramatic, teledramatic, theodramatic, underdramatic, undramatic