Word.ws English Dictionary

shawm

/ʃɔːm/

shawm noun: a mediaeval double-reed wind instrument with a conical wooden body.

shawm: a mediaeval double-reed wind instrument with a conical wooden body
Image: CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

shawm (plural shawms)

  1. A mediaeval double-reed wind instrument with a conical wooden body.
    • And all the field is thick with companies
      Of fair-clothed men that play on shawms and lutes
      And gather honey of the yellow fruits
      Between the branches waxen soft and wide1866, Algernon Charles Swinburne, “St. Dorothy”, in Poems and Ballads, London: J. C. Hotten, page 288
    • There are four flutes, a harp of twenty strings, a mournful shawm, and a number of drums of oxhide, some to be struck, others spanked.1985 September 1, Anthony Burgess, The Kingdom of the Wicked, London: Hutchinson & Co., →ISBN
    Synonyms:
    zurna

shawm meaning in Tamil and Tagalog

shawm in Tamil

வழக்கற்றுப்போன இசைக்கருவி வகை

shawm in Tagalog

wind instrument
karamilyo

Synonyms of shawm

Forms of shawm

pluralshawms

Origin of shawm

From Middle English shalmuse, from Old French chalemel (modern French chalumeau), from Late Latin calamellus, from Latin calamus (“reed”), from Ancient Greek κάλαμος (kálamos). Doublet of caramel, chalumeau, and qalam, as well as related to calame, calamus, culm, and haulm.

Words formed from shawm

Words that rhyme with shawm

Questions about shawm

What does shawm mean?
Shawm means a mediaeval double-reed wind instrument with a conical wooden body.
What is shawm in Tamil?
Shawm in Tamil is வழக்கற்றுப்போன இசைக்கருவி வகை. See Shawm meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is shawm?
Shawm is a noun.
How do you pronounce shawm?
Shawm is pronounced /ʃɔːm/.
What is the plural of shawm?
The plural of shawm is shawms.

Words near shawm in the dictionary

  1. shawlings
  2. shawlless
  3. shawllike
  4. shawls
  5. shawlwise
  6. shawm
  7. shawmer
  8. shawmers
  9. shawmist
  10. shawmists
  11. shawms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shawm (page history and authors); shawm (Tamil Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-shawm.wav.

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