violin

From Italian violino (“little viola”), from viola + -ino (forming diminutives).

• IPA^(key): /ˌvaɪəˈlɪn/

  • Audio (General American):

    (file)

• (Hong Kong) IPA^(key): /ˌvaɪ.oʊˈlin/, [ˌwaʊˈlin]
• Rhymes: -ɪn

violin (plural violins)

2. (music) A small unfretted stringed instrument with four strings tuned (lowest to highest) G-D-A-E, usually held against the chin and played with a bow.

   When I play it like this, it's a fiddle; when I play it like this, it's a violin.

   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XX, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

     She was looking more like Sherlock Holmes than ever. Slap a dressing-gown on her and give her a violin, and she could have walked straight into Baker Street and no questions asked.

3. (inexact, sometimes proscribed) Any instrument of the violin family, always inclusive of violins, violas and cellos, and sometimes further including the double bass.

   The string quartet, one of the most popular groupings in chamber music, is composed entirely of violins: two violins proper, one viola, and one cello.

4. (music, metonymic) A violinist in an orchestra or group.

   The violins are seated with sufficient elbow room.

   She is first violin in the London Symphony Orchestra.

The distinction between violins and fiddles is typically contextual and cultural. The same instrument is considered a violin when playing classical music in formal settings, a fiddle when playing folk or country music, and variously described in other settings (such as jazz and rock) depending whichever term seems more appropriate to the speaker.

• fiddle (see above), crowd (obsolete or dialectical)

• viol
• viola
• violoncello

• → Japanese: バイオリン (baiorin)
• → Korean: 바이올린 (baiollin)

violin (third-person singular simple present violins, present participle violining, simple past and past participle violined)

1. (ambitransitive) To play on, or as if on, a violin.

• bass viol
• cello
• double bass
• viola

• olivin

violin

1. inflection of violar:
   1. third-person plural present subjunctive
   2. third-person plural imperative

From Italian violino, diminutive form of viola with diminutive suffix -ino.

• IPA^(key): /violiːn/, [vioˈliːˀn]
• Rhymes: -in

violin c (singular definite violinen, plural indefinite violiner)

1. violin

• “violin” in Den Danske Ordbog
• “violin” in Ordbog over det danske Sprog

• IPA^(key): /vjuˈliŋ/

violin m (plural violin)

1. violin

violin c

1. (music, somewhat formal) violin

   Synonym: fiol

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