Definition of "hautboy" [haut•boy]

• An oboe. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In English it becomes hautboy, a wooden musical instrument of two-foot tone, I believe, played with a double reed, an oboe, in fact."
• "You remember in 'Henry IV' — 'The case of a treble hautboy"
• "But — and mark you, the leap paralyzes one — crossing the Western Ocean, in New York City, hautboy, or ho-boy, becomes the name by which the night-scavenger is known."