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instrumental

adjective · noun

Simple meaning

A pause in the vocals of a song, usually occurring midway through.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

ihnstruhmehntuhl

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ɪnstɹəˈmɛntəl

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. music

    Pertaining to, made by, or prepared for an instrument, especially a musical instrument (rather than the human voice).

  2. music

    A pause in the vocals of a song, usually occurring midway through, in which a musical instrument replaces the vocals.

  3. Essential or central; of great importance or relevance.

  4. Serving as an instrument, medium, means, or agency.

noun

  1. music

    A composition written or performed without lyrics or singing, using a lead instrument to replace vocals.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Pertaining to, made by, or prepared for an instrument, especially a musical instrument (rather than the human voice).

Used this way, instrumental is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a musical use: it is everyday language among musicians and listeners, and specialised outside that.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Where it naturally appears

  • Music/performance
  • Arts writing

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use instrumental

  • “Instrumental compositions.”adjective

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

instrumental musicinstrumental conditioninginstrumental roleinstrumental valuelargely instrumentalpurely instrumentalinstrumental reasoninstrumental works

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • instrumentationnounDerived noun · specialist

    An artifact (or system of artifacts) that is instrumental in accomplishing some end.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • instrumental conditioningnounCompound term

    Operant conditioning that pairs a response with a reinforcement in discrete trials.

  • instrumental musicnounCompound term

    Music intended to be performed by a musical instrument or group of instruments.

  • instrumental rolenounCompound term

    The semantic role of the entity (usually inanimate) that the agent uses to perform an action or start a process.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Antonyms

adjective

Sense: pertaining to or made by

vocal

noun

Sense: composition written or performed without lyrics or singing

vocal

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.