Re

Part of speech: noun, preposition

Definitions

1. The second note of the diatonic scale in solfège, sung between do and mi ; a preposition meaning about or concerning, often used in business letters
2. The syllable naming the second tone of the major scale ; a term signifying with reference to or in connection with a particular subject
3. A musical syllable for the second degree of a scale ; a word introducing the subject a message or document is about

Etymology: The word "re" that most people meet is the preposition and noun used in business and legal writing, borrowed straight from Latin "rē", the ablative of "rēs", meaning "thing, matter, topic". It carries the sense "concerning" or "in the matter of", which is why a subject line can open with it. It is also simply shorthand for "regarding" and "reply" in email and memos. A quite different "re" comes from music. Guido of Arezzo, an eleventh-century Italian monk, labelled the notes of his hexachordal scale with syllables taken from the hymn "Ut queant laxis", written by Paulus Deacon. Each line of that hymn began a higher note, and the second syllable, "re", came from the first word of the line's Latin verb "resonāre", meaning "made to resound". The syllable passed into Middle English as a name for the second degree of the scale, and it survives in the solfège sequence "do, re, mi". The prefix "re-", meaning "again" or "back", is a third and unrelated source, and English uses it freely to form new words from existing ones.

Synonyms: regarding, concerning, about, on