oboe
/ˈoʊboʊ/noun
oboe is spelled O-B-O-E: 4 letters and 2 syllables. It appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 42,145th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, oboe means “A soprano and melody wind instrument in the modern orchestra and wind ensemble. It is a smaller instrument and generally made of grenadilla wood. It…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of oboe is oboes.
How many letters and syllables are in oboe?
| Letters | 4: O-B-O-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 2 million words; the 42,145th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is oboe?
Oboe appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 42,145th 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).
How do you pronounce oboe?
- UK /ˈəʊbəʊ/
- US /ˈoʊboʊ/
- /ˈoʊbɔɪ/
Oboe has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-oboe.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with oboe?
6 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as oboe from its last stressed vowel (/oʊboʊ/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of oboe
- oboes plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does oboe mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A soprano and melody wind instrument in the modern orchestra and wind ensemble. It is a smaller instrument and generally made of grenadilla wood. It is a member of the double reed family.
noun
- 1
radiotelephony clear-code word for the letter O.
noun
- 1
Initialism of off-by-one error.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate oboe?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of oboe: Ob..
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Oboe in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense wind instrument:
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 oboe come from?
An earlier form in English is hautboy, but the spelling oboe was adopted into English ca. 1770 from the Italian oboè, a transliteration in that language's orthography of the 17th-century pronunciation of the French word hautbois, a compound word made of haut (“high, loud, high-pitched”) and bois (“wood, woodwind”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).