テンポ

1914 is an entry point for テンポ in Shogakukan's Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, which cites Gairaigo Jiten and also Abe Jiro's Santaro no Nikki from 1914-18. The source form is Italian tempo. Italian dictionaries trace tempo to Latin tempus and give meanings such as time, weather, grammatical tense, and musical speed. The same Japanese entry mentions Johann Maelzel's metronome after 1819. The Japanese route is Western music education in the Meiji and Taisho periods. In music, テンポ means the speed of performance, with related Italian loans such as アテンポ, テンポルバート, アレグロ, アンダンテ, and メトロノーム. Music lessons still pair it with 拍子 and リズム in school scores today. After the music sense became familiar, Japanese extended テンポ to the pace of work, speech, scenes, and social change. Modern Japanese テンポ appears in 話のテンポ, 仕事のテンポ, 急テンポ, and テンポが合う. English tempo also covers music and pace, so it is close in many uses. Italian tempo is much broader and can mean weather, as in bel tempo, or grammatical tense. Example: 今日はテンポがいい in Japanese means the pace is good, not that the weather is good.