Bagpiper

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈbæɡ.paɪ.pɚ/

Definitions

1. A musician who plays a wind instrument consisting of a bag that stores air and multiple pipes that produce sound when the air is forced through them
2. A performer skilled in playing a traditional musical instrument that includes a flexible air sack and several pipes that generate sound through airflow
3. An artist specializing in the execution of music on a unique wind instrument featuring a reservoir for air and various sound-emitting tubes

Etymology: The bagpiper is one of the few English compounds where the instrument came first and the person was named afterwards. "Bagpipe" is the older word, and "-er" was added to it in English, so the performer's name simply means one who plays the bagpipe. The instrument's own name, however, is far older than the English language's habit of building agent nouns this way. The "-er" ending has a long ancestry. It descends from a Latin suffix "-arius", which marked a person connected with something, and which passed through Old French and Old English into Middle English as "-ere" and "-er". English speakers have used it freely for centuries, attaching it to almost any noun, so "bagpiper" joins a large family of words such as "baker" and "piper" that follow the same pattern.

Synonyms: piper, musician