didgeridoo
did·ger·i·doo/ˌdɪd͡ʒ.əɹ.iˈduː/noun, verb
didgeridoo is a noun meaning “A musical instrument, endemic to the Top End of Australia, consisting of a long hollowed-out log which, when blown into, produces a low, deep…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-I-D-G-E-R-I-D-O-O and has 4 syllables (did·ger·i·doo), and it appears about once in every 6 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of didgeridoo is didgeridoos.
What does didgeridoo mean?
noun
- 1
A musical instrument, endemic to the Top End of Australia, consisting of a long hollowed-out log which, when blown into, produces a low, deep mesmerising drone with sweeping rhythms.
verb
- 1
rareTo play the digeridoo.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce didgeridoo?
- /ˌdɪd͡ʒ.əɹ.iˈduː/
Didgeridoo has 4 syllables, split did·ger·i·doo in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-didgeridoo.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of didgeridoo
- didgeridoos plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- didjeridu
- didjeridoo
- digeridoo
- didgeridooing participle, present
- didgeridooed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is didgeridoo?
Didgeridoo appears about once in every 6 million words in written English, the 71,529th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Didgeridoo in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense Australian musical instrument:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | didgeridoo |
| Portuguese | didgeridoo, didjeridu |
| Spanish | didgeridoo, didjeridu, diyiridú |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does didgeridoo come from?
Likely onomatopoeic in reference to the sound made by the instrument, or the words spoken into the instrument to play it. The earliest known description of the instrument was in 1829 by Captain Collet Barker, in which it was described as making the sound didoggerry whoan. In 2002, Lonergan proposed that the term could derive from Irish dúdaire dubh (“black hummer”) or Scottish Gaelic dùdaire dùth (“native piper”), though the latter seems to be coincidental, since there is no corroborating evidence and the terms would refer to the player (rather than the instrument itself).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).