Other forms: clarinets
A clarinet is a black tube with a single reed and a warm woody sound. Play the clarinet, a clarinet solo, learn the clarinet.
It overblows at the twelfth rather than the octave, which is why its fingering is harder than any other woodwind and why its low register sounds so different from its high one. The name means little trumpet, because the first ones had a strident tone.
1nounclarinetA woodwind instrument with a single reed.
“She plays the clarinet in the school orchestra.”
clarinet is an instrument.
Italian clarinetto is a diminutive of clarino, a trumpet, from Latin clarus, clear. The earliest clarinets sounded strident, like a small trumpet.
Proto-Indo-European
*kelh₁-
French
clarinette
Latin
clarus
Italian
clarinetto
English, today
clarinet
Built from
Borrowed from Italian clarinetto, diminutive of clarino (“trumpet”) (as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet), from Latin clarus. Alternatively, the word may come from French clarinette, diminutive form of clarine (“bell”), from clarin, from clair (“clear”), from Latin clarus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA