oboe

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”).

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈoʊboʊ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊbəʊ

oboe (plural oboes)

2. (music) 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.
   • 1990, Francis Bebey, African music: a people's art, page 64:

     Whistles, mirlitons, flutes, trumpets or horns, clarinets, and oboes are all played in one or more parts of the continent.

   • 2007 June 4, Alastair Macaulay, “Wake Up, Princess, the Movies Are Calling”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:

     This does become monstrously antimusical in one scene: when Tchaikovsky’s music, softly depicting the sleeping palace (my favorite passage of this composer’s entire oeuvre, with its beautifully muffled oboe melody suggesting how beauty ripens in sleep like a chrysalis), is turned into an epic battle for the poor passive Prince, conducted between the wicked Carabosse, with her ghoulish minions, and the Lilac Fairy, with her elves.

   • 2015 August 1, Vanessa Thorpe, “Musicians launch campaign to save the bassoon as shortage threatens orchestra”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     Using the “endangered species” model employed by the World Wide Fund for Nature, campaigners are highlighting the scarcity of bassoonists and paving the way for the promotion of some other orchestral instruments that are under threat, such as the oboe, French horn, viola, trombone and double bass.

• cor anglais
• hautboy

• Booe, OEOB, OOBE

From Italian oboe.

• IPA^(key): /ˈoboe/, [ˈo̞bo̞e̞]
• Rhymes: -oboe
• Syllabification^(key): o‧bo‧e
• Hyphenation^(key): oboe

oboe

1. (music) oboe

• “oboe”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[3] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 3 July 2023

• oboè (obsolete)

From French hautbois, transcribed phonetically.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɔ.bo.e/
• Rhymes: -ɔboe
• Hyphenation: ò‧bo‧e

oboe m (plural oboi)

1. (music) oboe
2. (metonymic) oboist

• oboe in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

oboe

1. Rōmaji transcription of おぼえ

Borrowed from French hautbois.^[1]

• IPA^(key): /oˈboe/ [oˈβ̞o.e]
• Rhymes: -oe
• Syllabification: o‧bo‧e

oboe m (plural oboes)

1. (music) oboe

• “oboe”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024

• IPA^(key): /ʊˈboː/, /ˈoːbʊ.ə/, /ˈoːbʊˌɛ/

oboe c

1. (music) an oboe

• oboist

• oboe in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• oboe in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• oboe in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)