double bass

1. 1.

   largest and lowest member of the violin family

   Synonymsbass fiddlebass violbull fiddlecontrabassstring bass

   Broaderbowed stringed instrumentbass

Questions about double bass

What does double bass mean?

double bass means "largest and lowest member of the violin family".

What is another word for double bass?

Close synonyms include bass fiddle, bass viol, bull fiddle, contrabass, 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 double bass a common word?

double bass 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.