contrabass

1. 1.

   largest and lowest member of the violin family

   Synonymsbass fiddlebass violbull fiddledouble bassstring bass

   Broaderbowed stringed instrumentbass

1. 1.

   pitched an octave below normal bass instrumental or vocal range

   “contrabass or double-bass clarinet”

   Synonymsdouble-bass

   Similarlow

Other forms of contrabass

plural

contrabasses·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about contrabass

What does contrabass mean?

contrabass means "largest and lowest member of the violin family". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in contrabass?

contrabass has 3 syllables: con-tra-bass. The stress falls on "con".

What is another word for contrabass?

Close synonyms include bass fiddle, bass viol, bull fiddle, double bass, string bass. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is contrabass a common word?

contrabass is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.