Fifers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Musicians who play a small shrill flute, traditionally marching alongside drummers in military or ceremonial bands
2. Players of a high-pitched transverse flute that accompanies drums in parades and fife-and-drum corps
3. Those who blow the piccolo-like fife in marching ensembles, often keeping time for a drummer in a procession

Etymology: "Fifers" is the plural of "fifer", a player of the fife, a small high-pitched transverse flute. The fife itself is a borrowing from German "Pfeife", meaning pipe, which is also the source of the English word "pipe" in its sense of a musical instrument. The "fife" that ended up in English is therefore a relative of the instrument it names, both descending from the same root meaning to whistle or pipe. The noun "fifer" is simply "fife" with the agent suffix "-er" attached, so it means one who plays the fife. The pairing is a neat piece of linguistic symmetry: "fife" and "pipe" were once shaped from the same sound-making idea, and "fifer" and "piper" are the same suffix applied to the two instruments. In this case the two forms are what linguists call a piecewise doublet, meaning they share a common origin but split into separate words, one passing into English from German and the other from Old English lineage.

Synonyms: piper, fluter