Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A musical instrument having a flexible bag inflated either by a tube with valves or by bellows, a double-reed melody pipe, and from one to four drone pipes.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To cause to resemble a bagpipe.
- noun A musical wind-instrument consisting of a leathern bag, which receives the air from the mouth, or from bellows, and of pipes, into which the air is pressed from the bag by the performer's elbow.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To make to look like a bagpipe.
- transitive verb (Naut.) to lay it aback by bringing the sheet to the mizzen rigging.
- noun A musical wind instrument, now used chiefly in the Highlands of Scotland.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Singular of
bagpipes (normally used in plural) - noun Attributive form of
bagpipe - verb To play the bagpipes.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a tubular wind instrument; the player blows air into a bag and squeezes it out through the drone
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Of course I admit that whether the bagpipe is a musical instrument or not is a matter of argument, for just what constitutes music my Irish friend, George Bernard Shaw, says is a point of view.
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 11 Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen Elbert Hubbard 1885
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The symphonia is thought by some to be the bagpipe, which is called sampogna by the modern Italians: by others it is regarded as a sort of organ.
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The skirl of a bagpipe was the only sound as the service began.
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We had a full time saxophone who played the "bagpipe" sounding parts which to my knowledge were performed on a guitar with an eBow.
Lost Classic Album: The Best of Big Country by Big Country Jeff C 2010
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The man took in the situation at a glance, and came to Billy's rescue, making the snake uncoil itself by playing on a kind of bagpipe, a queer, weird, monotonous piece of music.
Billy Whiskers The Autobiography of a Goat Frances Trego Montgomery 1891
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The Slovaks of the north play a kind of bagpipe, which reminds one of the Scotch ones; but the songs of the Slovak have got very much mixed with the Hungarian.
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 6 Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland, part 2 Various 1885
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+ The dulcimer, (Daniel 3: 5) a kind of bagpipe with two shrill reeds.
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When the young Winston Churchill said that given plain food and a philosophical attitude man could survive anything he forgot one thing - a good going bagpipe.
GOP Confronts Its Future Viability John 2009
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We can retire into our bagpipe bubble immune from the fiduciary maelstrom raging above.
GOP Confronts Its Future Viability John 2009
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No; so let's keep our sanity intact and our bagpipe manufacturers free from recession.
GOP Confronts Its Future Viability John 2009
ry commented on the word bagpipe
According to Eric Partridge (who I am disinclined to doubt) this was once a term for a strange sex act involving the armpit.
February 6, 2013