from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. cornet-à-piston
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. An obsolete name for the cornet-à-piston.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The cornet-à-pistons.
- n. In organ-building, a reed-stop of a bold, powerful tone.
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Five or six small boys, with pea-shooters, and the cornopean player, got up behind; in front the big boys, mostly smoking, not for pleasure, but because they are now gentlemen at large, and this is the most correct public method of notifying the fact.
Every minute the bustle and hubbub increased: porters staggered about with boxes and bags, the cornopean played louder.
One way or another, the party to which Tom belonged all got packed and paid, and sallied out to the gates, the cornopean playing frantically "Drops of Brandy," in allusion, probably, to the slight potations in which the musician and postboys had been already indulging.
Down comes Robinson's coach in a minute or two, with a rival cornopean, and away go the two vehicles, horses galloping, boys cheering, horns playing loud.
But when a quarter to nine struck, and he saw old Thomas beginning to fidget about with the keys in his hand, he thought of the Doctor's parting monition, and stopped the cornopean at once, notwithstanding the loud-voiced remonstrances from all sides; and the crowd scattered away from the close, the eleven all going into the School-house, where supper and beds were provided for them by the Doctor's orders.
Here are a violin, violoncello, horn, and cornopean; there an old Welsh harp and unstrung guitar.
How often are we -- George Stephens-like -- to be called upon to expend our invaluable breath in performing Eolian operations upon our own cornopean!
On a memorable night nearly thirty years ago, the whole cornopean stop of an organ was sold in the fair, amounting to seventy or eighty pipes with their reeds.
There were not more than a dozen musicians in all, and they ranged themselves in an orderly manner on each side of the laurel-crowned bust, in the order of the pitch of their instruments, the violins and flutes being in the middle, while the bass viol was at the extreme left, and the bass cornopean on the right.
"Now, boys, keep your eyes open, there must be plenty of lionesses about;" and thus warned, the whole load, including the cornopean player, were on the look-out for lady visitors, profanely called lionesses, all the way up the street.