hautboy
/ˈ(h)əʊbɔɪ
/noun
Archaic form of oboe.His voice had been likened to an oboe, the Elizabethan hautboy....
- Other timbres no longer carry their original significance: cornets for dignitaries not high enough in rank to merit trumpets, hautboys for banquets, consorts of flutes or recorders for rituals of death and transfiguration.
- The hautbois or ‘highwood’ as the direct translation would have it, came to us through its stages of hautboy, dropping the ‘h’ and altering vowels to oboe.
Origin
Mid 16th century: from French hautbois, from haut 'high' + bois 'wood'.