English Explanatory Dictionary

oboe

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A soprano and melody wind instrument in the modern orchestra and wind ensemble. It is a smaller instrument and generally made of grenadilla wood. It is a member of the double reed family.
noun
  1. radiotelephony clear-code word for the letter O.
noun
  1. Initialism of off-by-one error.

Pronunciation

ō'bō /ˈəʊbəʊ/ /ˈoʊboʊ/ en-us-oboe.ogg ō'boi /ˈoʊbɔɪ/

Word forms

oboe oboes

Etymology

An earlier form in English is hautboy, but the spelling oboe was adopted into English ca. 1770 from the Italian oboè, a transliteration in that language's orthography of the 17th-century pronunciation of the French word hautbois, a compound word made of haut (“high, loud, high-pitched”) and bois (“wood, woodwind”).

Synonyms

Oscar

Related words

cor anglais hautboy

Derived words

baroque oboe bass oboe contrabass oboe oboe da caccia oboe di caccia oboe d’amore oboeist oboelike oboe-player oboist piccolo oboe pink oboe
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on O Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary