Word.ws English Dictionary

sousa

sousa is the clipping of sousaphone.

Meaning of sousaphone

Noun

sousaphone (plural sousaphones)

  1. A valved brass instrument with the same length as a tuba, but shaped differently so that the bell is above the head, that the valves are situated directly in front of the musical instruments and a few inches above the waist, and that most of the weight rests on one shoulder.
    • One version of the large tuba, popular in marching bands, is called a sousaphone in honor of bandsman John Philip Sousa.1990, Thomas D. Rossing, The Science of Sound, page 230

Proper noun capitalized: Sousa

Sousa (plural Sousas)

  1. A surname from Portuguese.

Forms of sousa

Noun
pluralsousas
Proper noun
pluralSousas

Origin of sousa

Borrowed from Portuguese Sousa, from Old Galician-Portuguese Sousa.

Questions about sousa

What does sousa mean?
Sousa means a surname from Portuguese.
What is sousa the clipping of?
Sousa is the clipping of sousaphone.
What part of speech is sousa?
Sousa is a proper noun.

Words near sousa in the dictionary

  1. sous-chefs
  2. sous-vide
  3. sous-vided
  4. sous-vides
  5. sous-viding
  6. sousa
  7. sousaphone
  8. sousaphones
  9. sousaphonist
  10. sousaphonists
  11. sousas

Source and license

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