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• piano
  piano

  noun

  a musical instrument in which felt-covered hammers, operated from a keyboard, strike the metal strings.
• Piano
  Piano

  noun

  Renzo. born 1937, Italian architect; buildings include the Pompidou Centre, Paris (1977; with Richard Rogers), the Potsdamer Platz redevelopment, Berlin (1998), and The Shard, London (2012)

piano

¹ American  

[pee-an-oh, pyan-oh] / piˈæn oʊ, ˈpjæn oʊ /

noun

• pianos
  plural

1. a musical instrument in which felt-covered hammers, operated from a keyboard, strike the metal strings.

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piano ² American  

[pee-ah-noh, pyah-naw] / piˈɑ noʊ, ˈpjɑ nɔ /

adjective

1. soft; subdued.

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adverb

1. softly. p, p.

piano ¹ British  

/ ˈpjɑːnəʊ /

adjective

1.  p.  music (to be performed) softly

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piano ² British  

/ pɪˈænəʊ /

noun

1. a musical stringed instrument resembling a harp set in a vertical or horizontal frame, played by depressing keys that cause hammers to strike the strings and produce audible vibrations See also grand piano upright piano

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Piano ³ British  

/ pjˈɑno /

noun

1. Renzo. born 1937, Italian architect; buildings include the Pompidou Centre, Paris (1977; with Richard Rogers), the Potsdamer Platz redevelopment, Berlin (1998), and The Shard, London (2012)

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piano Cultural  

1. A musical direction meaning “to be performed softly”; the opposite of forte. As the name of a musical instrument, it is short for pianoforte.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• pianos
  plural

Etymology

Origin of piano¹

First recorded in 1795–1805; short for pianoforte

Origin of piano²

1675–85; < Italian: soft, low (of sounds), plain, flat < Latin plānus plain ¹

Explanation

A piano is a large musical instrument that you play by pressing black and white keys on a keyboard. Most people play a piano with their fingers, but Jerry Lee Lewis played with his fingers, feet, elbows, and, ahem, backside. A piano makes a sound when each key moves a small hammer that strikes a metal string. The inside of a piano looks kind of like a harp. Pianos are vital in many kinds of music, from classical to pop, and in the case of Lewis, boogie-woogie. Piano comes from the original Italian name for the instrument: piano e forte, "soft and loud." Piano is also the musical notation that tells the player that something should be played quietly.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

piano Piano pianos

The living area exudes class thanks to it dual seating areas, which are separated by a fireplace and piano.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 19, 2026

“The Governor’s Waltz” is a dreamy folk track about the stress of performance and desire for connection, with ghostly backing vocals and a piano that sounds like a series of tuned bells.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026

By Hector Berlioz writing of a possessed piano that plays itself, or by Kim Stanley Robinson’s fictional “Holywelkin’s Orchestra,” which turns mere thought into musical reality?

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026

In the lyrics, the singer professes his love for a girl called Celeste over a melancholy piano line, saying: "I hear her voice each time I take a breath".

From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026

The piano player was making an awful racket, pounding out low, somber notes that didn’t fit the mood of the film at all.

From "The Red Car to Hollywood" by Jennie Liu

The contrast between restrained facades and secretive decoration gets to the heart of the Genoese mentality, says Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, who divides his time between his native Genoa and Paris.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026

There was a master plan, which was made by Renzo Piano.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 16, 2026

Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar – One night, about 100 women from the Women in Auto Care conference I was attending descended on this place with zero warning — and the staff didn’t miss a beat.

From Salon ● Mar. 31, 2026

Odeleye won Wandsworth Musician of the Year in 2022, and later auditioned for The Piano at Liverpool Street Station.

From BBC ● Mar. 7, 2026

Piano lessons with Mrs. Virgil were always full of small fears.

From "It All Comes Down to This" by Karen English

The pianos are always muted, the drums all sound like they're being played next door, and the orchestra is buried deep in the mix to foreground Abrams' voice.

From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026

And it ends with Sabotage, where discordant pianos and jump-scare strings soundtrack her self-destruction.

From BBC ● May 2, 2026

A cousin to self-playing player pianos, photoplayers automatically play music read out of perforated piano rolls.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2025

The music was played by 50 upright pianos, each of them with ever-so-slightly different tuning, amid a scattered chamber orchestra, the Klangforum Wien, of 25 other instruments.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2025

“I thought people who played grand pianos already had money.”

From "Genuine Fraud" by E. Lockhart

Related Words

• grand piano
• instrument
• keyboard