Other forms: saxophones
The saxophone is the curved brass instrument at the heart of jazz. Play the saxophone, a saxophone solo, a tenor saxophone.
It is made of brass and counts as a woodwind, because the sound comes from a single reed like a clarinet's. The family runs soprano, alto, tenor and baritone, with the alto and tenor by far the commonest. It is usually shortened to sax. Note that it is one of very few orchestral instruments with a known inventor and a known date, and that it took jazz to make it central rather than the orchestra it was designed for.
1nounsaxophoneA curved brass instrument played with a single reed.
“The saxophone comes in about halfway through the second track.”
synonyms: sax
saxophone is a musical instrument.
Also accepted in games: sax
Adolphe Sax, a Belgian instrument maker, patented it in 1846, and the instrument carries his surname plus the Greek phone, sound. Sousaphone and vibraphone were named on the same pattern.
Proto-Indo-European
*sek-
Ancient Greek
φωνή — sound, voice
French
saxophone
English, today
saxophone
Built from
French saxophone, a combination of the surname of its inventor Adolphe Sax (1814–1894) + -o- + -phone (“something that makes a sound”), from Ancient Greek φωνή (“sound, voice”). The first element surname is a variant of the German - Sachs (“Saxon”). Analyzable as Sax + -o- + -phone.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA