Word: diabolus
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...tacky arcades and dingy diners, pinball today is played openly and avidly by scholars, doctors, scientists, showfolks, pols, brokers, journalists -members of the nervous trades. Manufacturers cannot supply enough of the new solid-state pins to meet the demands of upper-and middle-class families who want the erstwhile diabolus ex machina in their homes...
...regarded as the work of the devil. This discord is the augmented fourth (example: C and F sharp on the piano), was called the tritone because it spans three whole tones. The tritone was banned in sacred music, thus giving rise to a maxim: Mi contra fa est diabolus in musica (The tritone is the devil in music). When the sirens, beginning on a sweet major third or fifth, slip up and down into the bloodcurdling tritone, it sounds that way to Londoners...
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