Duet, Trio, Quartet, Quintet, Sextet, etc. Why is “trio” in here instead of tritet?
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In musical terms, you have a solo, one singer, singing alone.
You also have a duo, two singers, singing together.
And lastly you got a trio, three singers, singing together.
You also got something called triplet, which is about how some music is played, rather then singing.
Anyway, solo, duo, trio would be normally followed by quado, pento, hexo, hepto, octo, nono and so on, to follow the naming tradition, but as we all know, english is on a single language.
So people used the greek -tet suffix instead, because they where familiar with it, it was used instead, as well as quado, pento, hexo, hepto, octo, and nono not existing as a term in italian for 4,5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 singers.
Which is funny, cause quartet can be said to come from itallian quartetto, however, its not used for singing in italian, just playing music, i.e. string quartet.
I am pretty sure you can blame barbershop quartets for this, since they kinda made a word for something that did not exist, however, I am not certain of it, since its just guess work on my side.
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