piano player

noun

1

: pianist

After I'd made five or six bucks in tips, I'd split with the piano player and give the rest to Mom to hold.

—Billie Holiday with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, 1956

2

: a 19th-century mechanism for playing a piano that is either built into the piano or housed in a movable cabinet positioned in front of the piano and that uses a set of fingerlike levers activated by a piano roll to depress the keys

… an habitué of Lindy's, Hanson's Drugstore and a number of small, dark caves with piano players in them …

—New York Times Magazine, 22 May 1955

Word History

First Known Use

1808, in the meaning defined at sense 1

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