piccolo
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of piccolo
1855–60; < Italian: literally, small
Explanation
Many orchestras include a piccolo, which is a small, high-pitched flute. The word piccolo is in the fairly extensive group of Italian words that designate musical instruments and other musical terms. A piccolo is a small flute that plays an octave higher than an ordinary one; the word comes, appropriately enough, from the Italian for "small," which is also piccolo.
Vocabulary lists containing piccolo
Music to My Ears: Instrumental Vocab
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2015 Spelling Bee - Words from Round 2
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Musical Instruments - Introductory
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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:
Her flutes — from piccolo to bass and all in between — and friends became magic makers in this numinous physical and musical landscape.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 10, 2025
Being selected is a testament to every band member who came before, said Claire Rhyu, a flute and piccolo player, and she’s still in disbelief.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 24, 2023
And its finish: that long drawn-out sigh of clarinet, the delayed relief of its puff of piccolo — just perfect.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 20, 2023
But there’s also much to revel in as the background piccolo parts take on a greater presence in the mix.
From New York Times ● Feb. 24, 2022
It was like the whistling of a piccolo many times magnified—shrill and shriller till it keened with the terror of a lost soul and filled the room with the piercingness of itself.
From "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov
More often, Ms. Frank deploys an unusual combination of instruments, such as piccolos and celesta, or a motif—like the short, repeated pulse that sounds like a cry—to create a dreamscape that is all her own.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 18, 2026
Band members received new uniforms, new drums and, most recently, new flutes and piccolos, all of it paid for by the district’s budget for the arts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2024
Cox brought it to a crest with hopeful strings, leaping piccolos and optimistic blasts from across the back of the orchestra.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 8, 2022
On his website, Bird writes that he derived pitches for the background piccolos by analyzing “a crash cymbal and Janet Leigh’s infamous scream from Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho.’”
From New York Times ● Feb. 24, 2022
By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived--no thin five-piece affair but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high drums.
From " The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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.
