pied piper
noun
Simple meaning
The flute-playing ratcatcher who is the protagonist and title character of this story.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
pydpyperSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpaɪdpaɪpɚ
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.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The flute-playing ratcatcher who is the protagonist and title character of this story.
The title character in a German folk tale and in a poem by Robert Browning
A folk tale or legend, dating back to the Middle Ages, about a ratcatcher in variegated attire, hired by the German town of Hamelin, who is not paid for his services and retaliates by luring away the local children by playing a flute.
That which draws many in its wake.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The flute-playing ratcatcher who is the protagonist and title character of this story.
Used this way, pied piper is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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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.