oboe

plural oboes

1. entertainmentA soprano and melody wind instrument in the modern orchestra and wind ensemble. It is a smaller instrument and generally made of grenadilla wood. It is a member of the double reed family.

   Whistles, mirlitons, flutes, trumpets or horns, clarinets, and oboes are all played in one or more parts of the continent.

   1990, Francis Bebey, African music: a people's art, page 64

   2 more examples

   This does become monstrously antimusical in one scene: when Tchaikovsky’s music, softly depicting the sleeping palace (my favorite passage of this composer’s entire oeuvre, with its beautifully muffled oboe melody suggesting how beauty ripens in sleep like a chrysalis), is turned into an epic battle for the poor passive Prince, conducted between the wicked Carabosse, with her ghoulish minions, and the Lilac Fairy, with her elves.

   2007 June 4, Alastair Macaulay, “Wake Up, Princess, the Movies Are Calling”, in The New York Times

   Using the “endangered species” model employed by the World Wide Fund for Nature, campaigners are highlighting the scarcity of bassoonists and paving the way for the promotion of some other orchestral instruments that are under threat, such as the oboe, French horn, viola, trombone and double bass.

   2015 August 1, Vanessa Thorpe, “Musicians launch campaign to save the bassoon as shortage threatens orchestra”, in The Guardian

1. World War II era; joint US/RAF; World War II era; joint US/RAFradiotelephony clear-code word for the letter O.

   Synonyms: Oscar

plural OBOEs

1. abbreviationinitialismcomputingInitialism of off-by-one error.