What It Means
A gamut is a range or series of related things. When we say that something “runs the gamut,” we are saying that it encompasses an entire range of related things.
The flea market offerings run the gamut with a wide array of vendors each offering something unique.
Gamut in Context
“… she brings a certain je ne sais quoi to the production with themes running the gamut from circuses and rodeos to mermaids and pirates.” — Heather Douglas, Coast Weekend (Astoria, Oregon), 23 Apr. 2026
Did You Know?
With the song “Do-Re-Mi,” the 1965 musical film The Sound of Music (adapted from the 1958 stage musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein) introduced millions of non-musicians to solfège, the singing of the sol-fa syllables—do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti—to teach the tones of a musical scale. Centuries earlier, however, the do in “Do-Re-Mi” was known as ut. Indeed, the first note on the scale of Guido d’Arezzo, an 11th century musician and monk who had his own way of applying syllables to musical tones, was ut. d’Arezzo also called the first line of his bass staff gamma, which meant that gamma-ut was the term for a note written on the first staff line. In time, gamma-ut underwent a shortening to gamut, and later its meaning expanded first to cover all the notes of d’Arezzo’s scale, then to cover all the notes in the range of an instrument, and, eventually, to cover an entire range of any sort.
www.merriam-webster.com
