musette

English
WOTD – 19 July 2022

Etymology
A musette de cour (sense 1.1).[n 1]
A musette (sense 1.2) or piccolo oboe is a type of small oboe which evolved from the chanter or pipe of bagpipes.
Norwegian professional cyclist Thor Hushovd with a musette (sense 2) around his neck during the 2011 Tour de France.

From both of the following:[1]

Sense 2 (“small bag or knapsack with a shoulder strap”) is due to the resemblance of the original knapsack to the bag of bagpipes.[3]

Pronunciation
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /mjuːˈzɛt/, /mjʊ-/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • (General American) IPA(key): /mjuˈzɛt/
  • Rhymes: -ɛt
  • Hyphenation: mus‧ette

Noun

musette (plural musettes)

  1. (music)
    1. (historical) 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. [from 14th c.]
      Synonyms: pastoral oboe, shepherd's pipe
      1. (by extension) A pastoral air or tune that has a drone imitating such an instrument; also, a dance performed to this music. [from 18th c.]
    2. (historical) An organ stop using reed pipes with cone-shaped resonators, found in organs in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. [from 19th c.]
    3. A small oboe without a cap for its reed, which evolved from the chanter or pipe of bagpipes; a piccolo oboe. [from 19th c.]
      Synonyms: oboe musette, piccoloboe
  2. (chiefly US, originally military) In full musette bag: a small bag or knapsack with a shoulder strap, formerly used by soldiers, and now (cycling) chiefly by cyclists to hold food and beverages or other items. [from 20th c.]
    (cycling): Hyponym: bonk bag

Translations

Notes
  1. From the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, U.S.A.

References
  1. “musette, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2022; “musette, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  2. “mūsette, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  3. “† muse, n.2”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, December 2021.

Further reading

French

Etymology

Inherited from Middle French musette, Old French musette (“type of bagpipe”), from muse (“bagpipe”) +‎ -ette (diminutive suffix). Muse is a deverbal of 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).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /my.zɛt/
  • Audio(file)

Noun

musette f (plural musettes)

  1. musette
  2. bagpipe
  3. Ellipsis of bal musette.
  4. haversack (small bag for provisions)
    Synonym: havresac
  5. nosebag (round sack or bag to feed for a horse)

Derived terms

Further reading

Anagrams

Italian

Noun

musette f

  1. plural of musetta
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