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accompaniment

[uh-kuhm-puh-ni-muh nt, uh-kuhmp-ni-]
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noun
  1. something incidental or added for ornament, symmetry, etc.
  2. Music. a part in a composition designed to serve as background and support for more important parts.
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Origin of accompaniment

First recorded in 1725–35; accompany + -ment
Related formsnon·ac·com·pa·ni·ment, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Examples from the Web for accompaniments

Historical Examples

  • Of what value to the salads are the accompaniments often served with them?

    Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4

    Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

  • His followers, that is to say, by repeating His life would experience its accompaniments.

    Pax Vobiscum

    Henry Drummond

  • I arrange her business and I play her accompaniments, and, as I said, I love her and she loves me.

    A Singer from the Sea

    Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

  • Now a siege was necessary, with all its accompaniments of blood and woe.

  • And sometimes there would be like accompaniments to meteoric streams.

British Dictionary definitions for accompaniments

accompaniment

noun
  1. something that accompanies or is served or used with something else
  2. something inessential or subsidiary that is added, as for ornament or symmetry
  3. music a subordinate part for an instrument, voices, or an orchestra
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for accompaniments

accompaniment

n.

1744, from French accompagnement (13c.), from accompagner (see accompany). Musical sense is earliest.

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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper