Other forms: instruments
An instrument is something built for playing music — a violin, a drum, a piano. The word covers all of them at once, which is why an orchestra is a room full of instruments.
Away from music, an instrument is a fine tool for precise work: surgical instruments laid out on a cloth, the instruments a pilot watches when cloud hides the ground, the instrument panel in a cockpit. In law it is a formal document — a legal instrument, an instrument of surrender. It also names a means to an end: taxation as an instrument of policy, or a person used by someone more powerful, an instrument in their hands. Take care with instrumental, which means either important in making something happen, or a piece of music with no singing.
1nouninstrumentAn object made for playing music.
“The violin was the first instrument she learned.”
2nounimplementA precise tool used for delicate or scientific work.
“The nurse laid the instruments out on a clean cloth.”
3noundeviceA device that measures something and shows the reading.
“The pilot flew on instruments through thick cloud.”
4noundocumentA formal legal document.
“The treaty is the instrument that ended the war.”
5nounmeansA means of achieving something.
“Taxation became an instrument of social policy.”
instrument is a tool.
Also accepted in games: musical instrument
Latin īnstrūmentum meant an implement or tool, built from īnstruō, 'to equip, to build up', with the ending -mentum that turns a verb into the thing it does the job with. English took it through Old French. Music borrowed the word from the toolbox, not the other way round.
Latin
īnstrūmentum — an implement, tool
Old French
instrument
Middle English
instrument
English, today
instrument
From Middle English instrument, from Old French instrument, from Latin īnstrūmentum (“an implement, tool”), From īnstruō + mentum.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA