trombone

Pluraltrombones, tromboni

Formstrombones, tromboning, tromboned

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A brass instrument with a cylindrical bore, usually played with a sliding tube rather than valves, most often the tenor type pitched in B♭.

   The orchestra's three trombones came in for the final chorus.

   He bought a vintage trombone with a beautifully lacquered slide.

   Note

   An Italian borrowing that means, quite literally, "large trumpet": tromba plus the augmentative ending -one. The everyday English plural is trombones, but English also allows the Italian plural tromboni. In orchestral writing the instrument works both alone and in a group: Don Michael Randel's Harvard Dictionary of Music (2003) describes horns, trumpets and trombones becoming central to the orchestra soloistically and sectionally.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The common European bittern, a heron-like wading bird of reedy marshes known for its loud booming call.

   At dusk a trombone called out across the fen with its deep, foghorn note.

   The wetland warden counted four trombones nesting in the flooded reedbeds that year.

   Similarbittern

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An extendable support for attaching lighting elements to a film or stage set.

   The gaffer adjusted the trombone to lower the key light closer to the actor's face.

   Two trombones held the backlights in place above the studio set.

   Note

   Lighting hardware of the film and television studio, built to work with the set rather than stand on the floor. Alan Wurtzel's Television Production (1983) explains that it lets a light be positioned over a set wall, so the wall itself carries the weight. Crews also speak of its trombone handle, which Harry Box's Set Lighting Technician's Handbook (2013) names alongside the focus knob as the two secondary controls.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To send a signal or data back to a central switching point before forwarding it to its final destination.

   Poorly designed networks trombone traffic through a distant data center, adding delay.

   Engineers noticed the switch would trombone every packet before delivery.

   Note

   Network engineers took the name from the shape of the brass instrument: the traffic runs out to a central switch and doubles back on itself before going on. The word usually describes an inefficient, indirect path rather than a good design. It is a regular verb (tromboned, tromboning) and takes the signal, call or data as its object: a badly placed switch trombones the traffic.

5. 5
   verbslangtransitive

   To extend and retract a camera's zoom lens, especially to use the zoom excessively.

   Rookie shooters often trombone the zoom whenever the action gets exciting.

   He tromboned the lens so much that the footage felt dizzying.

   Note

   This is film-set slang, and it is seldom praise: pumping the zoom in and out recalls the slide of the brass instrument. It takes the lens as its object, so you trombone a zoom, or catch someone tromboning the zoom lens. Kathryn Ramey's Experimental Filmmaking (2015) counts it among deliberately wrong moves, and in Henry K. Miller's The Essential Raymond Durgnat (2014), Durgnat shouts at it during a 1967 London Film Festival screening.

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