MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does musical instrument mean? 

• MUSICAL INSTRUMENT (noun)
  The noun MUSICAL INSTRUMENT has 1 sense:

1. any of various devices or contrivances that can be used to produce musical tones or sounds

  Familiarity information: MUSICAL INSTRUMENT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MUSICAL INSTRUMENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any of various devices or contrivances that can be used to produce musical tones or sounds

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

instrument; musical instrument

Hypernyms ("musical instrument" is a kind of...):

device (an instrumentality invented for a particular purpose)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "musical instrument"):

barrel organ; grind organ; hand organ (a musical instrument that makes music by rotation of a cylinder studded with pegs)

hurdy-gurdy; hurdy gurdy; wheel fiddle (a stringed instrument that produces sounds by means of a wheel that rubs against the strings)

bass (the member with the lowest range of a family of musical instruments)

calliope; steam organ (a musical instrument consisting of a series of steam whistles played from a keyboard)

electronic instrument; electronic musical instrument (a musical instrument that generates sounds electronically)

jew's harp; jews' harp; mouth bow (a small lyre-shaped musical instrument that is placed between the teeth and played by twanging a wire tongue while changing the shape of the mouth cavity)

keyboard instrument (a musical instrument that is played by means of a keyboard)

music box; musical box (produces music by means of pins on a revolving cylinder that strike the tuned teeth of a comb-like metal plate)

percussion instrument; percussive instrument (a musical instrument in which the sound is produced by one object striking another)

stringed instrument (a musical instrument in which taut strings provide the source of sound)

wind; wind instrument (a musical instrument in which the sound is produced by an enclosed column of air that is moved by bellows or the human breath)

 Context examples 

I observed in the king’s kitchen all sorts of mathematical and musical instruments, after the figures of which they cut up the joints that were served to his majesty’s table.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

You use your fingers and thumbs to do everything from grasping objects to playing musical instruments to typing.

(Finger Injuries and Disorders, NIH)

Heyer randomly assigned different musical instruments to different gases, forming a combination consisting of a saxophone, a piano, an upright bass and some percussion woodblocks.

(Does Our Galaxy Sound Like Funky Blues Music?, George Putic/VOA)

With his personal advantages and his extraordinary gifts—for he can speak several languages and play nearly every musical instrument—it is wonderful that he should have been satisfied so long in such a position, but I suppose that he was comfortable, and lacked energy to make any change.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I was carried into an inn, where the guard wanted me to have some dinner; but, as I had no appetite, he left me in an immense room with a fireplace at each end, a chandelier pendent from the ceiling, and a little red gallery high up against the wall filled with musical instruments.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He gave me the names and descriptions of all the musical instruments, and the general terms of art in playing on each of them.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

On the second morning, about eleven o’clock, the king himself in person, attended by his nobility, courtiers, and officers, having prepared all their musical instruments, played on them for three hours without intermission, so that I was quite stunned with the noise; neither could I possibly guess the meaning, till my tutor informed me.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)