embouchure

American  

[ahm-boo-shoor, ahm-boo-shoor, ahn-boo-shyr] / ˌɑm bʊˈʃʊər, ˈɑm bʊˌʃʊər, ɑ̃ buˈʃür /

noun

• embouchures
  plural

1. the mouth of a river.

2. the opening out of a valley into a plain.

3. Music.

   1. the mouthpiece of a wind instrument.

   2. the adjustment of a player's mouth to such a mouthpiece.

---

embouchure British  

/ ˌɒmbʊˈʃʊə /

noun

1. the mouth of a river or valley

2. music

   1. the correct application of the lips and tongue in playing a wind instrument

   2. the mouthpiece of a wind instrument

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• embouchures
  plural

---

Etymology

Origin of embouchure

1750–60; < French, equivalent to embouch ( er ) to put (an instrument) to one's mouth ( em- em- ¹ + bouche mouth < Latin bucca puffed cheek) + -ure -ure

---

Explanation

If you play the flute or trumpet, you might know that embouchure refers to the way you put your mouth on the instrument in order to make the proper sound. Sometimes the mouthpiece itself is also called an embouchure. Brass and woodwind instruments are all played by blowing into or across an opening, the embouchure. As a method of playing such instruments, embouchure is a way of holding your mouth-including lips, facial muscles, and teeth. This often involves buzzing your lips against the instrument's mouthpiece. Embouchure is a French word that means "river mouth" (from bouche, "mouth") and it used to actually refer to the mouth of a river.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

embouchure embouchures

Trumpeters need to play all the time because of the embouchure and muscle memory.

From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2025

It’s usually the second one — it at least tells me what kind of strength I have in my embouchure.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2020

The embouchure, or position of lips and mouth, necessary to coax musical notes from the horn’s twisted metal is notoriously tricky.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 17, 2020

If you’re a trumpeter, you learn how to form your lips into the proper embouchure.

From New York Times ● May 30, 2017

He said, “It’s called a recorder. Once you’ve developed a little wind, and some tone and a embouchure we’ll move on to something a little more complicated.”

From "Bud, Not Buddy" by Christopher Paul Curtis

His timing is spot on, exaggerating players’ embouchures of the wind instruments he fakes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2017

I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

From Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

To puddle in the embouchures and drowned outskirts, and ulterior and ultimate issues and cloacas of the affair: what profit can there be in that?

From Latter-Day Pamphlets by Thomas Carlyle

The coast, as well as the embouchures of the rivers, exhibit a deposit of deep mud, and yet far at sea banks of clean siliceous sand arise.

From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Sir Edward Belcher

Lines of plane-trees, with foliage now blighted yellow and bright green in February, define the embouchures of the three grim black ravines radiating from the upper heights, and broadening out as they approach the bay.

From To the Gold Coast for Gold A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Volume I by Sir Richard Francis Burton

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---