Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An oboe.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In organ-building, same as oboe, 2.
  • noun A wind-instrument of wood, sounded through a double reed: in recent use more commonly in the Italian form oboe.
  • noun In botany, a kind of strawberry, Fragaria elatior, growing in Europe at moderate altitudes.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Mus.) A wind instrument, sounded through a reed, and similar in shape to the clarinet, but with a thinner tone. Now more commonly called oboe. See Illust. of oboe.
  • noun (Bot.) A sort of strawberry (Fragaria elatior).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun dated, music The oboe.
  • noun music A reed stop on an organ giving a similar sound.
  • noun A tall-growing strawberry, Fragaria elatior, having a musky flavour.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a slender double-reed instrument; a woodwind with a conical bore and a double-reed mouthpiece

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French hautbois, from Old French : haut, high; see haughty + bois, wood (of Germanic origin).]

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Examples

  • In English it becomes hautboy, a wooden musical instrument of two-foot tone, I believe, played with a double reed, an oboe, in fact.

    Local Color 2010

  • But — and mark you, the leap paralyzes one — crossing the Western Ocean, in New York City, hautboy, or ho-boy, becomes the name by which the night-scavenger is known.

    Local Color 2010

  • You remember in 'Henry IV' — 'The case of a treble hautboy

    Local Color 2010

  • Most organs have a similar group of standard stops -- trumpet, oboe (hautboy) and violin -- but many larger instruments have their own distinctive touches thrown into the mix.

    In Washington for convention, organists pull out all the stops 2010

  • “No,” answered he, pointing to the room in which was erected the new gallery, and whence, as he spoke, issued the sound of a hautboy, “there is a flute playing there already.”

    Cecilia 2008

  • "If while you are sitting on your porch sipping Margaritas a trio of itinerant musicians serenades you with mandolin, lute, and hautboy, you have no obligation, in the absence of a contract, to pay them for their performance no matter how much you enjoyed it."

    Need for Recusals by Judges 2008

  • Three nights later three violins, a flute, a guitar, and a hautboy began another serenade.

    Ursula 2006

  • When their tread had died away from the ear, and the wind swept over the isolated grave with its customary siffle of indifference, Lot Swanhills turned and spoke to old Richard Toller, the hautboy player.

    A Changed Man 2006

  • About midnight she was awakened by the music of a band composed of a clarinet, hautboy, flute, cornet a piston, trombone, bassoon, flageolet, and triangle.

    Ursula 2006

  • Gaunt he beat his own name; for you might have thrust him and all his apparel into an eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court: and now has he land and beefs.

    The second part of King Henry the Fourth 2004

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