Word.ws English Dictionary

musettes

musettes is the plural of musette.

Meaning of musette

Noun

musette (plural musettes)

  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.
    Synonyms:
    pastoral oboe, shepherd's pipe
    1. (broadly, historical) A pastoral air or tune that has a drone imitating such an instrument; also, a dance performed to this music.
  2. (historical) An organ stop using reed pipes with cone-shaped resonators, found in organs in France in the 17th and 18th centuries.
  3. A small oboe without a cap for its reed, which evolved from the chanter or pipe of bagpipes; a piccolo oboe.
    Synonyms:
    oboe musette, piccoloboe
  4. (US) 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.
    • The young gentleman had a musette over his shoulder.1923, [Ernest Hemingway], “Out of Season”, in Three Stories […] & Ten Poems […], [Paris]: [Contact Publishing Company]; printed at Dijon by Maurice Darantière, →OCLC, page 13

Questions about musettes

What is musettes the plural of?
Musettes is the plural of musette.

Words near musettes in the dictionary

  1. musest
  2. muset
  3. museth
  4. musets
  5. musette
  6. musettes
  7. musetto
  8. museum
  9. museum beetle
  10. museum beetles
  11. museum piece

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: musettes (page history and authors); musette (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.

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