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How is adagissimo played?
Take an exceptionally slow, deliberate pace while keeping the phrase alive. Historical dictionaries define Adagissimo as a higher degree of slowness than Adagio, and publisher evidence shows the word still used as an operative score marking. The metre, note values, texture, period and any explicit metronome mark determine how that extreme slowness works in practice; solemnity or weight may result, but the word itself primarily intensifies tempo.
How does adagissimo sound?
Extreme, weighted slowness — slower and more emphatic than adagio.
I could not find adagissimo in a single major reference dictionary — not Oxford, not Treccani, not even the 1880 Grove. The one real trace is a 1921 American textbook that places it, by name only, among the very slowest tempo words: grave, larghissimo, adagissimo, lentissimo. No number attached, then or since. My guess is the word simply outran its own usefulness — very, very slow was already covered by grave and larghissimo, and adagissimo never quite found its own space.
In context
W. S. B. Mathews’s 1895 musical dictionary calls Adagissimo the superlative degree of Adagio, and Johann Ernst Häuser’s 1833 lexicon groups Adagissimo and Adagiosissimo as very or most slow, beyond ordinary Adagio. Faber’s published information for John Woolrich’s Adagissimo confirms a modern primary-score use. These sources retain the baseline’s extreme, weighted slowness without adding numerical certainty. The proposed adagis. appears in only one general online list and lacks sufficient independent A/B evidence, so adagissimo remains written out.