Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A series of variations on a martial theme or traditional dirge for the highland bagpipes.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A wild, irregular kind of music, peculiar to the Scottish Highlands, performed upon the bagpipe.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A Highland air, suited to the particular passion which the musician would either excite or assuage; generally applied to those airs that are played on the bagpipe before the Highlanders when they go out to battle.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A series of musical variations for the
bagpipes , usuallymartial orfunerary in nature.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun martial music with variations; to be played by bagpipes
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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To this opinion Dr. Beattie has given his suffrage, in that following elegant passage: -- 'A pibroch is a species of tune, peculiar, I think, to the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland.
The Lady of the Lake Walter Scott 1801
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A pibroch would cry for the wounded man but I needed more - I needed something tougher.
They didn’t read Pitchfork or Stereogum or Gorilla vs. Bear or Hipster Runoff Josh Spilker 2010
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Tracie #57: I thought it was well known that the preferred musical instrument in hell was the pibroch.
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British MP George Galloway, a supporter of the anti-Israeli boycott movement, in his relentless pibroch against the Jewish state compares the Palestinians to the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae.
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2009
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The wild wailings of the pibroch were heard at times, interchanged with the drums and fifes, which beat the Dead March.
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The bagpipe-player in the centre dropped his melancholy eyes, filled with the reflections of the forests and the lakes, in profound inattention, while men were being exterminated around him, and seated on a drum, with his pibroch under his arm, played the Highland airs.
Les Miserables 2008
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The last, nevertheless, again grasped his instrument, and the pibroch of the clan yet poured its expiring notes over the Clan Chattan, while the dying minstrel had breath to inspire it.
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However, a few wee drams and a CD of pibroch music helps me get over it.
Page 3 2006
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“Nay, then, I will don thy buff coat and cap of steel, and walk with thy swashing step, and whistling thy pibroch of ‘Broken Bones at Loncarty’; and if they take me for thee, there dare not four of them come near me.”
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Oliver at last relieved his host by swaggering off, imitating as well as he could the sturdy step and outward gesture of his redoubted companion, and whistling a pibroch composed on the rout of the Danes at
chained_bear commented on the word pibroch
See piobaireachd.
October 31, 2007
yarb commented on the word pibroch
"...all around us, under the orderly bucolic antiphonies of drunken argument, I could hear swelling wild, swift, and ominous the pibroch of hysteria."
- W.M. Spackman, Heyday
December 22, 2011