bassoon

Borrowed from French basson.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /bəˈsuːn/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) enPR: bə-so͞onʹ, IPA^(key): /bəˈsun/
• Hyphenation: bas‧soon

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːn

bassoon (plural bassoons)

1. A musical instrument in the woodwind family, having a double reed and playing in the tenor and bass ranges.

   Synonym: (dated) fagotto

   • 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

     Higher and higher every day, / Till over the mast at noon— / The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, / For he heard the loud bassoon.

   • 1834, Arnold Merrick, transl., Methods of Harmony, Figured Base, and Composition, translation of original by Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, page 303:

     The most convenient and natural order is, perhaps, the following: the upper staff may have the flute-part, because it has the highest notes, and, therefore, requires most room above the staff; then follow the parts for the hautboys, clarinets, horns, bassoons, tromboni, trumpets, and drums; the upper half of the page thus containing the wind-instruments: the lower half belongs to the violins, viola, voices, violoncello, and double base.

   • 2018, Robert Philip, The Classical Music Lover's Companion to Orchestral Music, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 465:

     After another alternation of the two elements, there is a more playful episode, in which flute and bassoon take up the first element, with swooping glissando on the ondes Martenot.

bassoon (third-person singular simple present bassoons, present participle bassooning, simple past and past participle bassooned)

1. To play the bassoon.
2. To make a bassoon-like sound.

• bassoon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

bassoon

1. illative singular of basso