la
la Lexical Profile
la Game Scores & Validity
• noun
American (usually capitalized as LA) An abbreviation for Los Angeles, the largest city in the U.S. state of California, located on the southern Pacific coast and renowned as the center of the American film and television industry.
American (usually capitalized as LA) The official postal abbreviation for Louisiana, a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States bordered by the Gulf of Mexico.
The sixth syllable used in solfège to represent the sixth degree (the submediant) of a diatonic scale, or the note A in fixed-do systems.
"The choir director instructed the sopranos to sustain the pitch on la before resolving to the tonic."
(capitalized as La) The chemical symbol for lanthanum, a soft, ductile, silvery-white metallic element with atomic number 57 that initiates the lanthanide series.
"In the periodic table, the symbol La represents the rare-earth metal lanthanum."
• interjection
A meaningless syllable sung to a melody when the words are forgotten, unknown, or omitted, often repeated in a series.
"The children skipped down the garden path singing 'la, la, la' at the top of their lungs."
An archaic or dialectal exclamation used to express surprise, emphasis, or mild derision.
"La, what a grand carriage they have arrived in!"
• Rhymes for la
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
In music, borrowed from Medieval Latin, taken from the initial syllable of 'labii' in the 8th-century hymn to Saint John the Baptist ('Ut queant laxis'), introduced as a solmization system by Guido d'Arezzo in the 11th century.