soft pedal

1. 1.

   a pedal on a piano that moves the action closer to the strings and so soften the sound

   Broaderpedal

   Part ofpiano

Questions about soft pedal

What does soft pedal mean?

soft pedal means "a pedal on a piano that moves the action closer to the strings and so soften the sound".

Is soft pedal a common word?

soft pedal 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.