Blowing Your Own Trumpet
A trumpet is a brass instrument with three valves. The phrase about blowing your own is a polite English way of calling someone a boaster.
A trumpet is a brass instrument, usually with three valves. Before valves were invented in the nineteenth century, a trumpet could only play the notes of the harmonic series, which is why old fanfares sound the way they do. The phrase *blow your own trumpet* has meant self-promotion since the sixteenth century.
- A brass instrument. *A trumpet solo.*
- To proclaim loudly. *The results were trumpeted.*
- Blow your own trumpet — boast. *He never blows his own trumpet.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | trumpet | A silver trumpet. |
| Plural | trumpets | Massed trumpets. |
| Person | trumpeter | A jazz trumpeter. |
| Verb | trumpet | Trumpeted as a triumph. |
| Related | cornet | A brass band cornet. |
How it is used in a sentence
- He plays trumpet in a big band.No article after play with instruments in jazz usage.
- The deal was trumpeted as historic.Announced loudly.
- Elephants trumpet when alarmed.The animal sense.
Brass instruments
- Trumpet — bright and high, three valves
- Cornet — similar range, mellower, conical bore
- Flugelhorn — softer still, wider bore
- Trombone — uses a slide instead of valves
- Tuba — the lowest of the family
From Old French *trompette*, a diminutive of *trompe*, a horn. The valves that made full chromatic playing possible were invented around 1815.
Blow your own trumpet or horn?
Trumpet is British, horn American. Both mean praising your own achievements.
Why do old trumpet parts use so few notes?
Because natural trumpets had no valves and could sound only the harmonic series of one length of tubing.