acoustic

Pluralacoustics

1. 1
   adjective

   Producing sound naturally, or produced naturally by an instrument, without electric amplification and without needing it.

   She swapped her electric guitar for an acoustic one for the quieter songs.

   The concert closed with a short acoustic set, just a grand piano and one voice.

   Similarunplugged

   Oppositeelectric

   Note

   Musicians attach it to instruments and to whole performances alike: an acoustic guitar or piano, but also an acoustic set or an acoustic version of a song. For performances, unplugged is its close partner. In this sense the word does not take degrees; a guitar is acoustic or it is not, never more acoustic than another.

2. 2
   short for guitarnounabbreviationclipping

   Clipping of acoustic guitar.

   For the folk numbers she switched from her electric to an acoustic.

   He keeps a battered acoustic by the couch and plays it most evenings.

   Note

   Guitarists clip the phrase to its first word, and the result pairs naturally with electric: a player might own two electrics and an acoustic. The plural is acoustics, the same spelling as the sound qualities of a room, but a shop selling used acoustics leaves no doubt which is meant.

3. 3
   room soundnouncountable

   The properties of a room or building that determine how sound travels through it.

   Engineers spent months adjusting the acoustics of the new concert hall.

   The recital room has a dry acoustic, so every wrong note is easy to hear.

   Note

   The noun is normally plural and then takes a plural verb: the acoustics are superb, the acoustics were improved. The singular also turns up when one overall character of a space is meant, as in a dry acoustic or a warm acoustic, a usage that sounds a little more technical.

4. 4
   adjective

   Relating to the sense of hearing, to the organs of hearing such as the ear, or to the science of sound.

   Damage to the acoustic nerve can leave a person with permanent hearing loss.

   Her lab studies the acoustic signals that frogs use to recognize members of their own species.

   Similarauditory, aural

   Note

   Here the word stays closest to its origin: Medieval Latin acousticus, from Greek akoustikos, "of or for hearing," built on akouō, "to hear." The Greek looked at the listener, and so does this sense. In acoustic nerve the word names part of the body that hears, not anything that makes a sound, so keep it apart from the unamplified-instrument meaning of an acoustic guitar.

5. 5
   works by soundadjective

   Of a device or system: operating by means of sound energy.

   Researchers lowered acoustic sensors to the seabed to record whale calls.

   An acoustic depth sounder times how long a pulse of sound takes to bounce back from the bottom.

   Similarsonic

6. 6
   building materialadjective

   Of building materials: used to soundproof a space or to change how sound behaves within it.

   The studio walls are lined with acoustic foam to cut down on echoes.

   Contractors installed acoustic insulation between the apartments to block noise from upstairs.

   Note

   Two different jobs hide under the label. Some acoustic materials stop sound passing from one room to the next, which takes heavy, airtight construction; others soak up echoes inside a room. Foam panels and ceiling tiles mostly do the second, so they make a studio sound less boomy without doing much to keep out the neighbors' noise.

7. 7
   sound-triggered weaponadjective

   Of an explosive mine or other weapon: capable of being set off by sound waves.

   The minesweeper towed a noisemaker to detonate any acoustic mines ahead of the convoy.

   The ships crept through the strait at low speed, trying to stay too quiet to trigger an acoustic mine.

   Note

   Naval mines are commonly sorted by what sets them off: contact mines explode when struck, magnetic mines when a steel hull passes over them, and acoustic mines at the noise of engines and propellers. The word therefore names the trigger, not the charge, and the standard answer to such a mine is a towed noisemaker that fires it at a safe distance.

8. 8
   not electric (machine)adjectivehumorous

   Not electric but mechanical, said of an ordinary machine to set it apart from an electric version.

   The shop by the beach rents electric and acoustic bicycles by the hour.

   Half the riders on the bridge had e-bikes, and I was puffing along on an acoustic bike.

   Similarmechanical

   Oppositeelectric

   Note

   A playful stretch of the music meaning: just as an acoustic guitar needs no amplifier, an acoustic bike needs no battery or motor. The joke has reached mainstream journalism, with Wired asking in 2022 whether a new rider should get an electric or an acoustic bicycle, but some readers object to the usage, so keep it for light, informal writing.

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