Other forms: pianos
A piano is the big instrument with black and white keys. Play the piano, a grand piano, piano lessons.
A standard piano has 88 keys and around 230 strings under some twenty tonnes of total tension, which is why the frame is cast iron. Hammers strike the strings, which makes it a percussion instrument by one classification and a string instrument by another. Note piano as a musical direction meaning softly; and that the name is short for pianoforte, meaning soft-loud.
1nounpianoA large keyboard instrument with hammers and strings.
“A piano has 88 keys and about 230 strings.”
2adverbsoftlySoftly, as a musical direction.
“The conductor asked the violins to play the last bars piano.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
piano is a musical instrument.
Italian pianoforte is piano, soft, plus forte, loud — named because it could play both, unlike the harpsichord. English shortened it to the first half, which is the half that means soft.
Proto-Indo-European
*pleh₂-
Italian
pianoforte
English, today
piano
Built from
a clipping of pianoforte, from Italian pianoforte, from piano (“soft”) + forte (“strong”). So named because it could produce a wide range of varied volumes note-by-note, in contrast to older keyboard instruments, notably the harpsichord. a doublet of llano and plain and plane and plan.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA