Word of the Day:
cello
What It Means
A large unfretted stringed instrument of the violin family with four strings tuned (lowest to highest) C-G-D-A and an endpin to support its weight, usually played with a bow.
Cello in Context
“And the cello concerto was strikingly different on Sunday: at Weill, the ensemble included two violinists and one violist, cellist, bassist and lutenist, but on Sunday four more violinists, a second violist and a harpsichordist were added to give the ripieno sections of the fast movements a heftier...”
Did You Know?
Clipping of violoncello, the original name, from Italian violoncello (“little violone”), from violone (“an early form of the double bass”) + -cello (“-elle”, forming diminutives), violone (“big viola”) itself being derived from viola + -one (“-oon”, forming augmentatives).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cello (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “cello.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cello. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
