bagpipes

noun

1. Often bagpipes. a reed instrument consisting of a melody pipe and one or more accompanying drone pipes protruding from a windbag into which the air is blown by the mouth or a bellows.

verb (used with object), bag·piped, bag·pip·ing.

2. Nautical. to back (a fore-and-aft sail) by hauling the sheet to windward.

pl n

1. any of a family of musical wind instruments in which sounds are produced in reed pipes supplied with air from a bag inflated either by the player’s mouth, as in the Irish bagpipes or Highland bagpipes of Scotland, or by arm-operated bellows, as in the Northumbrian bagpipes

noun

1. (modifier) of or relating to the bagpipesa bagpipe maker

n.

late 14c., from bag (n.) + pipe (n.1); originally a favorite instrument in England as well as the Celtic lands, but by 1912 English army officers’ slang for it was agony bags. Related: Bagpiper (early 14c.).