musette
/mjuˈzɛt/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.67 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any of various small bagpipes having a soft sound, especially with a bellows, which were popular in France in the 17th and early 18th century.
noun
Any of various small bagpipes having a soft sound, especially with a bellows, which were popular in France in the 17th and early 18th century.
noun
An organ stop using reed pipes with cone-shaped resonators, found in organs in France in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Example Sentences
- "The young gentleman had a musette over his shoulder."
- "I gave them money for platform tickets and had them take my baggage. There was a big rucksack and two musettes."
- "Yossarian watched Chief White Halfoat pour whiskey carefully into three empty shampoo bottles and store them away in the musette bag he was packing."
Etymology
From both of the following: * Late Middle English musette (“type of bagpipe”), from Middle French musette, Old French musette (“type of bagpipe”) (modern French musette), from muse (“bagpipe”) + -ette (diminutive suffix). Muse is derived from muser (“to play the bagpipe; (figuratively) to flatter”), perhaps from musel (“muzzle (protruding part of an animal’s head)”) (alluding to a bagpipe player puffing out the cheeks), from Late Latin mūsus (“muzzle”); further etymology uncertain, perhaps expressive of protruding lips and/or influenced by Latin mūgiō (“to bellow, low, moo”), from Proto-Indo-European *mug-, *mūg- (onomatopoeia of the lowing of cattle). * Borrowed from French musette in the 18th century. Sense 2 (“small bag or knapsack with a shoulder strap”) is due to the resemblance of the original knapsack to the bag of bagpipes.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /mjuˈzɛt/
- British English: /mjuːˈzɛt/
Usage
- American usage