👁 Image

From Italian piccolo (“small”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpɪkələʊ/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈpɪkəloʊ/
• Rhymes: -ɪkələʊ

piccolo (plural piccolos or piccoli)

1. (music) A transverse flute that is smaller than a Western concert flute and pitched nearly an octave higher.

   Synonym: octave flute

2. (music) An organ stop with the tone of a piccolo flute.
3. (music, obsolete) A piccolo piano.
4. A waiter’s assistant in a hotel or restaurant.

   Synonyms: busser, commis waiter, (slang, possibly obsolete) omnibus

   • 1910, Saki [pseudonym; Hector Hugh Munro], “The Soul of Laploshka”, in Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches, London: Methuen & Co.[…], →OCLC, page 71:

     [A]s I fled I felt Laploshka's reproachful eyes watching the amount that I gave to the piccolo—out of his two francs.

5. (US, chiefly Southern US and New York) A coin-operated gramophone; a jukebox.
6. A bottle of champagne containing 0.1875 litres of fluid, one quarter the volume of a standard bottle.

   Synonyms: quarter bottle, snipe

piccolo

1. Designating the highest-pitched or smallest of a family of musical instruments.
   • 1945, Christian Darnton, You and Music‎^[1], 2nd edition, New York: Pelican Books, retrieved 20 February 2022, page 65:

     There is also the Piccolo Trumpet, built in D, which can with ease attack high notes which are outside the range of the ordinary B flat instrument, as well as the rarely used Bass Trumpet.

• “piccolo, n. and adj.”, in OED Online 👁 Paid subscription required
  ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

From Italian piccolo (“small, little, young”).

piccolo c (singular definite piccoloen, plural indefinite piccoloer)

1. bellboy, bellhop
2. office boy

• (female) piccoline

• piccolofløjte

Borrowed from Italian piccolo (“small”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈpi.koː.loː/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: pic‧co‧lo

piccolo m (plural piccolo's, diminutive piccolootje n)

1. (music) piccolo (small flute)
2. piccolo, hotel porter
3. piccolo (small bottle of champagne)

From Italian piccolo.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpikːolo/, [ˈpikːo̞lo̞]
• Rhymes: -ikːolo

piccolo

1. alternative spelling of pikkolo

• “piccolo”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[2] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 3 July 2023

• picolo (post-1990 spelling)

From Italian piccolo.

• IPA^(key): /pi.kɔ.lo/

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Somain)):

  (file)

piccolo m (plural piccolos)

1. (music) piccolo

• “piccolo”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

👁 Image

From German Piccolo, from Italian piccolo.^[1]

• IPA^(key): [ˈpikːolo]
• Hyphenation: pic‧co‧lo
• Rhymes: -loː

piccolo (plural piccolok)

1. (music) piccolo

   Synonyms: pikoló, kisfuvola, ottavino

Uncertain. Possibly from:

• An onomatopoeic root or children's/nursery word *pikk-, *picc-.^[1]
• From Vulgar Latin *pikk (“little”), related to *piccāre (“to pierce”), from Proto-Indo-European *bew-, *bu- (“to make a dull, hollow sound”).^[2]
• From picca (“point”).
• From Vulgar Latin pittitus (“small, worthless”), which is linked to French petit and English piece.^[3]

• IPA^(key): /ˈpik.ko.lo/^[4]

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ikkolo
• Hyphenation: pìc‧co‧lo

piccolo (feminine piccola, masculine plural piccoli, feminine plural piccole, comparative più piccolo or minore, superlative minimo, diminutive piccolìno or piccolétto (“short person”), double diminutive (uncommon) piccolettìno, augmentative piccolóne, diminutive-augmentative piccolòtto (“short and stock person”))

1. small
2. little
3. young
4. (vulgar, slang) of the penis: small or not erected

• piccino

• grande
• grosso

• piccolezza
• piccolotto
• piccoletto

• micro-
• nano-

• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “piccolo”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.

👁 Image

• pikolo

Unadapted borrowing from Italian piccolo.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpi.kɔ.lɔ/, /piˈkɔ.lɔ/
• Rhymes: -ikɔlɔ, -ɔlɔ
• Syllabification: pi‧cco‧lo

piccolo n

1. piccolo (small, high-pitched transverse flute)

   Synonyms: flet piccolo, pikulina

piccolo m pers

1. (dated) potboy (boy or man employed in a public house to collect empty pots or glasses)

   Synonym: pikolak

   Hypernym: służący

• piccolo in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• piccolo in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Unadapted borrowing from Italian piccolo.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpikolo/ [ˈpi.ko.lo]
• Rhymes: -ikolo
• Syllabification: pic‧co‧lo

piccolo m (plural piccolos)

1. alternative form of pícolo

• According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

• “piccolo”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025

Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=piccolo&oldid=89898204"