Word.ws English Dictionary

by ear

by ear prepositional phrase: to learn to play (an instrument) or sing by listening to recorded music without reading or memorizing sheet music or without any formal instruction.

Prepositional phrase

  1. To learn to play (an instrument) or sing by listening to recorded music without reading or memorizing sheet music or without any formal instruction.
  2. (language learning) To learn a language without instruction.
  3. To do by guessing, to improvise.

Words formed from by ear

Questions about by ear

What does by ear mean?
By ear means to learn to play (an instrument) or sing by listening to recorded music without reading or memorizing sheet music or without any formal instruction.
What part of speech is by ear?
By ear is a prepositional phrase.

Words near by ear in the dictionary

  1. by default
  2. by definition
  3. by degrees
  4. by design
  5. by dint of
  6. by ear
  7. by extension
  8. by eye
  9. by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail
  10. by fair means or foul
  11. by far

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: by ear (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “by ear.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/by_ear. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.