Description

The word flute first entered the English language during the MiddleEnglish period, as floute,[4] or else flowte, flo(y)te,[5] possiblyfrom Old French flaute and from Old Provençal flaüt,[4] or elsefrom Old French fleüte, flaüte, flahute via Middle High Germanfloite or Dutch fluit. The English verb flout has the samelinguistic root, and the modern Dutch verb fluiten still shares thetwo meanings.[6] Attempts to trace the word back to the Latin flare(to blow, inflate) have been pronounced "phonologically impossible"or "inadmissable".[5] The first known use of the word flute was inthe 14th century.[7] According to the Oxford English Dictionary,this was in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Hous of Fame, c.1380.[5] Today,a musician who plays any instrument in the flute family can becalled a flutist (pronounced "FLEW-tist", most common in theUS),[8] or flautist (pronounced "FLAW-tist", most common in theUK),[9] or simply a flute player (more neutrally). Flutist datesback to at least 1603, the earliest quote cited by the OxfordEnglish Dictionary. Flautist was used in 1860 by NathanielHawthorne in The Marble Faun, after being adopted during the 18thcentury from Italy (flautista, itself from flauto), like manymusical terms in England since the Italian Renaissance. OtherEnglish terms, now virtually obsolete, are fluter (15th–19thcenturies)[10][11][12] and flutenist (17th–18th centuries).[6][13]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flute