Word.ws English Dictionary

orchestre

orchestre is the obsolete form of orchestra.

Meaning of orchestra

Noun

orchestra (plural orchestras or (rare) orchestrae)

  1. A large group of musicians who play together on various instruments, usually including some from strings, woodwind, brass and/or percussion; the instruments played by such a group.
    • The orchestra plays music for the dancers to dance to in the 19th century-styled dance hall.
  2. (Ancient Greece) A semicircular space in front of the stage used by the chorus in Ancient Greek and Hellenistic theatres.
  3. The area in a theatre or concert hall where the musicians sit, immediately in front of and below the stage, sometimes (also) used by other performers.
  4. (collective) A group of crickets.
    • the jackhammering racket of the city softened and an orchestra of crickets trilled in unison2024 September 11, Eliot Stein, “Kayaking the waters that shaped New York City”, in BBC

Forms of orchestre

pluralorchestres

Origin of orchestre

French

Questions about orchestre

What is orchestre the obsolete form of?
Orchestre is the obsolete form of orchestra.

Words near orchestre in the dictionary

  1. orchestrations
  2. orchestrative
  3. orchestratively
  4. orchestrator
  5. orchestrators
  6. orchestre
  7. orchestrelle
  8. orchestrelles
  9. orchestres
  10. orchestric
  11. orchestrina

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: orchestre (page history and authors); orchestra (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: “orchestre.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/orchestre. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.