flute

• enPR: floo͞t, IPA^(key): /fluːt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːt

From Middle English fleute, floute, flote, from Old French flaute, from Provençal flaut, of uncertain origin. Perhaps ultimately from three possibilities:

• Blend of Provencal flaujol (“flageolet”) + laut (“lute”)
• From Latin flātus (“blowing”), from flāre (“to blow”)
• Imitative.

flute (woodwind instrument)

flute (plural flutes)

1. (music) A woodwind instrument consisting of a tube with a row of holes that produce sound through vibrations caused by air blown across the edge of the holes, often tuned by plugging one or more holes with a finger; the Western concert flute, a transverse side-blown flute of European origin.
   • Alexander Pope

     The breathing flute's soft notes are heard around.

2. (music, colloquial) A recorder, also a woodwind instrument.
3. A glass with a long, narrow bowl and a long stem, used for drinking wine, especially champagne.
4. a lengthwise groove, such as one of the lengthwise grooves on a classical column, or a groove on a cutting tool (such as a drill bit, endmill, or reamer), which helps to form both a cutting edge and a channel through which chips can escape
5. (architecture, firearms) A semicylindrical vertical groove, as in a pillar, in plaited cloth, or in a rifle barrel to cut down the weight.
6. A long French bread roll.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Simmonds to this entry?)

7. An organ stop with a flute-like sound.
8. A shuttle in weaving tapestry etc.

• (as a specific instrument, a transverse, side-blown flute): Western concert flute
• (as a general category of musical instruments): edge-blown aerophone

• flageolet

• bansuri

• 1999. How to Love Your Flute: A Guide to Flutes and Flute Playing. Mark Shepard. Pg. 6.

fluted pillars

flute (third-person singular simple present flutes, present participle fluting, simple past and past participle fluted)

1. (intransitive) To play on a flute.
2. (intransitive) To make a flutelike sound.
3. (transitive) To utter with a flutelike sound.
   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XIII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, OCLC 1227855:

     “Oh, there's my precious Poppet,” said Phyllis, as a distant barking reached the ears. “He's asking for his dinner, the sweet little angel. All right, darling, Mother's coming,” she fluted, and buzzed off on the errand of mercy.

4. (transitive) To form flutes or channels in (as in a column, a ruffle, etc.); to cut a semicylindrical vertical groove in (as in a pillar, etc.).

• champagne flute
• flautist
• fluted (adjective)

Compare French flûte (“a transport”)?, Dutch fluit.

flute (plural flutes)

1. A kind of flyboat; a storeship.

• flute on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Flute in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

• IPA^(key): /flyt/

flute f (plural flutes)

1. Alternative spelling of flûte

This spelling was a product of the 1990 French spelling reforms.

• “flute” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

flute

1. First-person singular present of fluten.
2. First-person singular subjunctive I of fluten.
3. Third-person singular subjunctive I of fluten.
4. Imperative singular of fluten.

• IPA^(key): /flut/
• Stress: flùte
• Hyphenation: flu‧te

From flûte, from French flûte, from Old French fleüte, from Old Occitan flaut.

flute m (plural flute)

1. flute (type of glass)

• flûte, fluttino