Musician
nounA person who composes, conducts, or performs music, especially as a profession or skilled pursuit.
How to spell musician
8 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce musician
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does musician mean?
- nounA person who composes, conducts, or performs music, especially as a profession or skilled pursuit.
Musician in a sentence
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The wedding band hired a session musician to play keyboards.
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She trained for years before becoming a professional musician.
Where does musician come from?
Language of origin: Greek
This word is built from 'music' plus the suffix '-ian', which marks a person who practises a particular art or trade. 'Music' itself reaches back to the Greek mousike, short for mousike techne, meaning literally 'the art of the Muses', the nine goddesses who in classical mythology presided over poetry, song, and the other liberal arts. The term travelled from Greek into Latin as musica, then into Old French as musique, and entered English in the 1300s. 'Musician' appeared soon after, formed on the French musicien, to name someone who composes or performs music. The spelling trap lies in that ending: the spoken '-shun' sound is written '-cian', a giveaway of the '-ian' suffix attached to a stem ending in 'c', the same pattern seen in 'physician' and 'electrician'.
How the word is built
- music (from Greek mousike, the art of the Muses)
- -ian (suffix meaning a person skilled in or practising something)
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