allegro

Picture an Italian music director in the early eighteenth century marking a score allegro: he was not merely demanding speed, but asking the musicians to play with a spring in their step. The word arrived in English as a musical term in 1721, borrowed from Italian allegro, “brisk, sprightly, cheerful.” Its Latin ancestor, alacer—or alacrem in the form recorded by etymologists—also gave English alacrity, that buoyant readiness to act. John Milton had already used “L’Allegro” as the title of a poem in 1632, when the word still meant simply “the cheerful man” or “the cheerful mood,” rather than a precise tempo marking. So allegro is not just musical horsepower: it is Latin cheerfulness wearing an Italian conductor’s hat.