shakuhachi
Syllables: sha·ku·ha·chi/ʃɑkuˈhɑt͡ʃiː/
shakuhachi noun: a Japanese flute which is tuned to a pentatonic scale and is end-blown like a recorder instead of being held transversely like the Western transverse flute.
Noun
shakuhachi (plural shakuhachis)
- A Japanese flute which is tuned to a pentatonic scale and is end-blown like a recorder instead of being held transversely like the Western transverse flute.
- Sampled shakuhachi sounds on the E-mu Emulator II were heard in the 1980s in TV ads and also appeared prominently in popular songs, as in the opening section of Peter Gabriel's 1986 “Sledgehammer,”[…]2019, W. Anthony Sheppard, Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 419
Forms of shakuhachi
| plural | shakuhachis |
|---|
Origin of shakuhachi
Borrowed from Japanese 尺八 (しゃくはち, shakuhachi), from 尺 (tsyhek, an archaic measure of length approximately equal to 30 centimeters) + 八 (peat, “eight”), corresponding to the standard length of the instrument (approximately 55 centimeters).
Questions about shakuhachi
- What does shakuhachi mean?
- Shakuhachi means a Japanese flute which is tuned to a pentatonic scale and is end-blown like a recorder instead of being held transversely like the Western transverse flute.
- What part of speech is shakuhachi?
- Shakuhachi is a noun.
- How do you pronounce shakuhachi?
- Shakuhachi is pronounced /ʃɑkuˈhɑt͡ʃiː/.
- What is the plural of shakuhachi?
- The plural of shakuhachi is shakuhachis.
Words near shakuhachi in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shakuhachi (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: “shakuhachi.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shakuhachi. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.