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duet

UK/djuˈɛt/US/djuˈɛt/
nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,416 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: duets

A duet is a song or piece performed by exactly two people. Sing a duet, a piano duet, perform the duet.

A piano duet is two players at one instrument, where two pianos is a different thing with its own name. The word is Italian for a little two, and it came into English with most of the vocabulary of music.

Hendrick ter Brugghen · Public domain

Definitions of duet

  1. 1nounduetA song or piece performed by two people.B2

    “The two sisters sang a duet at their parents' anniversary party.”

duet is a performance.

Where it comes from

Italian duetto is a diminutive of due, two, from Latin duo. Most musical terms came into English from Italian.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *dwóh₁

  2. Italian

    duetto — short musical composition for two voices

  3. English, today

    duet

Built from

  • due · Italian — two

From Italian duetto (“short musical composition for two voices”), diminutive of due (“two”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Music, Art & Culture

Practise this word

duet in the wild

  • A piece performed by two pianists performing together on the same piano is a "piano duet" or "piano four hands".

    Duet

  • Friends in High Places is an album of duets by the American country music artist George Jones, released in 1991.

    Friends in High Places (George Jones album)

  • "A Few Ole Country Boys", a duet with Randy Travis, was a country music hit.

    Friends in High Places (George Jones album)

  • One of the first keyboard duets is "For two Virginals" by Giles Farnaby from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, written in the late 16th century.

    Piano duet

  • The piano duet came to popularity in the second half of the 18th century.

    Piano duet

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.