# instrumental

Pronunciation: say "in-struh-MEN-tuhl" /ɪnstɹəˈmɛntəl/

## Adjective

1. Essential or central; of great importance or relevance to a result or situation.
   - Simple: Very important in helping something happen or succeed.
   - _The whistleblower's testimony was instrumental in exposing the fraud._
   - _Several local businesses were instrumental in funding the summer festival._
2. Acting as an instrument, medium, or means through which something is accomplished.
   - Simple: Working as a tool or a way to get something done.
   - _The local press served an instrumental function, carrying news between the capital and remote villages._
   - _Critics argued the charity had become merely instrumental, a vehicle for its founder's ambitions._
3. Performed on, composed for, or relating to musical instruments rather than the human voice.
   - Simple: Made or played with musical instruments, not with singing.
   - _The film's instrumental score relies heavily on strings and piano._
   - _After two vocal numbers, the orchestra performed an entirely instrumental arrangement of the song._
5. A passage within a song, typically near its midpoint, where the vocals pause and an instrument carries the music in their place.
   - Simple: A part in the middle of a song where the singing stops and the instruments play alone.
   - _The track's instrumental gives the saxophonist eight bars to improvise._
   - _She always skips ahead when a long instrumental interrupts the verses._
6. Designating a grammatical case that expresses means or agency, roughly equivalent to English prepositions such as by, with, or through.
   - Simple: Describing a word form in some languages that shows the tool or way something is done.
   - _Russian puts the noun for a tool into the instrumental case rather than using a preposition._
   - _Students often confuse instrumental endings with dative ones in their first year of Polish._

## Noun

4. A musical composition written or performed without lyrics, in which a lead instrument typically carries the melody in place of vocals.
   - Simple: A piece of music with no singing or words.
   - _She released an instrumental of the single for fans who wanted to record their own vocals over it._
   - _The surf-rock era produced dozens of hit instrumentals built around twangy guitar lines._
7. The grammatical case that expresses the means, tool, or agent by which an action is carried out.
   - Simple: A special word form in some languages that shows what tool was used to do something.
   - _In Russian, the word for 'pen' takes the instrumental when you say you wrote with a pen._
   - _Polish marks the predicate of 'to be' with the instrumental in many constructions._

## Origin

From Middle English instrumental, from Medieval Latin īnstrūmentālis, equivalent to "instrument" plus the suffix "-al."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/instrumental (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).