Other forms: trumpets, trumpeting, trumpeted
A trumpet is the brass instrument you blow into, with three valves on top. Play the trumpet, a trumpet solo, learn the trumpet.
It is the highest of the standard brass instruments and the loudest for its size. The three valves change the length of tubing and so the note; the rest is done with the lips. It is central to jazz, to orchestras and to military ceremony. The verb means to announce something loudly and proudly: trumpeted as a breakthrough. Note blow your own trumpet, meaning to boast about your own achievements.
1nountrumpetA brass instrument with three valves, played by blowing.
“He played the trumpet badly and with enormous enthusiasm.”
2verbannounceTo announce something loudly and proudly.
“The result was trumpeted on every front page.”
trumpet is a brass instrument.
Old French trompette is a diminutive of trompe, a horn — so a trumpet is a little horn. The Frankish original was probably imitative of the sound, which makes the word an ancestor of the noise it names.
Frankish
*trumpa
Old French
trompette — trumpet
Middle English
trumpet
English, today
trumpet
Built from
From Middle English trumpet, trumpette, trompette (“trumpet”), from Old French trompette (“trumpet”), diminutive of trompe (“horn, trump, trumpet”), from Frankish trumpa, trumba (“trumpet”), ultimately imitative of the sound. Cognate with Old High German trumpa, trumba (“horn, trumpet”), Middle Dutch tromme (“drum”), Middle Low German trumme (“drum”), Old Norse trumba (“pipe; trumpet”). More at drum. Displaced native beme, from beme, from bīeme.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Music, Art & Culture, Music & Instruments