noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of musician
1350–1400; Middle English musicien < Middle French. See music, -ian
Explanation
Anyone who plays music can be called a musician. Whether you're playing the cello on stage at Carnegie Hall or playing the harmonica on a subway platform, you're a musician. While this word is most often used to mean a professional instrumentalist, it can also refer to someone who writes or sings music, and even your brother's friend who occasionally plays the drums in a Led Zeppelin cover band. Musician originally meant "one skilled in music," from the Latin musica, "the art of music and poetry," which has a Greek root, mousike, "art of the Muses."
Vocabulary lists containing musician
List 2
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -an
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Tennessee musician James Rogers, president of the board of the American Eagle Foundation - which joined forces with Dollywood for a bald eagle sanctuary - recalled the singer's unrivalled kindness and one-on-one attentiveness.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026
Initially, Derbez had no intention of becoming a musician, and instead studied filmmaking in college.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026
Iconic country musician Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80, her family announced on her social media on Tuesday.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026
The Muppets celebrated Parton on Threads, writing “there will never be another quite like Dolly Parton” and posted photos of the musician sharing the screen with Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2026
I learned this Yiddish song from another musician on my transport here.
From "What the Night Sings" by Vesper Stamper
The musicians who supplanted the East Village folkies were by that time dinosaurs themselves, having been rendered extinct by pop permutations several times over.
From Salon ● Aug. 29, 2026
But they were also musicians and scientists and doctors and plumbers and farmers and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and very often children.
From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026
Parton laid off her longtime Traveling Family Band and sought out musicians and songs that were more purely pop.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2026
He said the multiple award-winning artist had "opened doors for generations of singers, songwriters, musicians, and dreamers from every walk of life."
From Barron's ● Aug. 25, 2026
Young students and beginning musicians should go through it with a teacher, in either a classroom or lesson setting.
From "Understanding Basic Music Theory" by Catherine Schmidt-Jones and Russel Jones
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
