oboe

Meaning

Noun

• 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.

Origin

• 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 and bois.