- 1和聲的、和弦的；（物理／音樂）泛音、諧波。注意：台灣的音樂課本說「和聲」(harmony) 和「泛音」(harmonic 當名詞)，理工科則說「諧波」，同一個英文字在兩個領域走兩條路。
Harmonic is about notes sounding together. In music, when several notes are played or sung at the same time and they fit each other, that is harmony — and 'harmonic' is the adjective for it. So 'harmonic structure' means how the chords in a song are built and how they move; a 'harmonic change' is the moment the chord under the melody changes. Notice the split: 'melodic' is about notes one after another (the tune you hum), 'rhythmic' is about time, 'harmonic' is about notes stacked up at the same moment. Music teachers and people who write about music use this word a lot; ordinary listeners rarely say it — they just say 'the chords'. There is a second life for this word in science and maths, where a 'harmonic' (used as a noun) is one of the higher, quieter notes that hides inside one played note and gives an instrument its colour; a violin and a flute playing the same note sound different because their harmonics differ. From there engineers borrowed it for any wave that repeats at a whole-number multiple of a base rate, and you meet it in electrical work with no music anywhere in sight. There is also a warm, loose use — 'a harmonic blend of flavours' — where someone means only 'the parts go well together'. That use is real, but it is a stretch from music, and some careful writers dislike it.
From the word’s history
From Latin harmonicus, from Greek harmonikós, from harmonía 'harmony'.
經拉丁文 harmonicus 來自希臘文，源自「和諧」一字。
組成harmony（和聲）+ -ic（形容詞字尾，「跟…有關的」）。harmony 一路回到古希臘文 harmonía，本來的意思不是音樂，而是「接合、把東西接得剛好」——像木工把兩塊木頭接在一起。所以這個字的底層畫面是「合得起來」。
同家族的字
- harmonythe noun this adjective is built from — the same Greek harmonía
- harmonicaalso from harmony; Benjamin Franklin named his glass instrument that way
- harmonizeharmony + -ize: to make things fit together, in music or in general
- philharmonicGreek phil- 'loving' + harmonic — a 'music-loving' orchestra
原始詞典資料10 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
harmonicadj/hɑːˈmɒnɪk/
- 1
Pertaining to harmony.
- 2
Pleasant to hear; harmonious; melodious.
- harmonic twang of leather, horn, and brass.
- 3
mathematicssciencesUsed to characterize various mathematical entities or relationships supposed to bear some resemblance to musical consonance.
- The harmonic polar line of an inflection point of a cubic curve is the component of the polar conic other than the tangent line.
- 4
Recurring periodically.
- 5
human-scienceslinguisticsphonologyExhibiting or applying constraints on what vowels (e.g. front/back vowels only) may be found near each other and sometimes in the entire word.
- 6
Of or relating to a generation an even number of generations distant from a particular person.
- A person is harmonic with respect to members of his own generation and with respect to members of all even-numbered generations counting away from his own (e.g., his grandparents' generation, his grandchildren's generation, etc.).
harmonicnoun/hɑːˈmɒnɪk/
- 1
natural-sciencesphysical-sciencesphysicsA component frequency of the signal of a wave that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency.
- 2
entertainmentlifestylemusicThe place where, on a bowed string instrument, a note in the harmonic series of a particular string can be played without the fundamental present.
- 3
mathematicssciencesOne of a class of functions that enter into the development of the potential of a nearly spherical mass due to its attraction.
- 4
One's child.
- Games for the harmonics, (children), YL's and XYL's and the OM's, plus free soda for all.
- The harmonics (kids, I mean) sometimes failed to recognize me on the rare occasions when I emerged from the shack […]
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。