noun
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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:
His 2009 track Reflecting, which charts his journey from a difficult childhood to becoming a successful musician, was a major turning point for him and grime, he says.
From BBC ● Nov. 7, 2026
Raised in Eagle Rock by two musician parents, Henderson always had the world of entertainment within reach.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2026
Republicans also lost ground in the lone Rio Grande Valley district they already held, as Tejano musician Bobby Pulido ousted two-term Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg.
From Salon ● Nov. 5, 2026
“This house was the desktop image on my computer years before I bought it,” the musician told Rolling Stone in a 2014 interview.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 2, 2026
“I’m a musician too. I play the violin!”
From "The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street" by Karina Yan Glaser
Folk musicians performed as pilgrims sheltered from the spring sun under umbrellas.
From Barron's ● Nov. 9, 2026
The interpretive range of possibilities that the “Ring” offers musicians and directors is a gift.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026
Now, musicians make that claim all the time.
From BBC ● Nov. 3, 2026
It does so by treating the technology as stupid, musicians as creative artists and the audience as capable of opening its collective mind.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 2, 2026
The words musicians use to describe timbre are somewhat subjective, but most musicians would agree with the statement that, compared with each other, the first sound is mellow, the second bright, and the third rich.
From "Understanding Basic Music Theory" by Catherine Schmidt-Jones and Russel Jones
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
