shawm

From Middle English shalmuse, from Old French chalemel (modern French chalumeau), from Late Latin calamellus, from Latin calamus (“reed”), from Ancient Greek κάλαμος (kálamos). Doublet of caramel and chalumeau, as well as related to calame, calamus, culm, and haulm.

• IPA^(key): /ʃɔːm/
• Rhymes: -ɔːm

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shawm (plural shawms)

1. A mediaeval double-reed wind instrument with a conical wooden body.
   • 1866, Algernon Charles Swinburne, “St. Dorothy”, in Poems and Ballads, London: J. C. Hotten, page 288:

     And all the field is thick with companies
     Of fair-clothed men that play on shawms and lutes
     And gather honey of the yellow fruits
     Between the branches waxen soft and wide

   • 1985 September 1, Anthony Burgess, The Kingdom of the Wicked, London: Hutchinson & Co., →ISBN:

     There are four flutes, a harp of twenty strings, a mournful shawm, and a number of drums of oxhide, some to be struck, others spanked.

• zurna

• Catalan shawm
• shawmist, shawmer
• still shawm

• hawms, whams