barbershop quartet
4
4.0
- noun
- /ˈbɑːrbərˌʃɑːp kwɔːrˈtɛt/
:
cuarteto de barbería
- He seems out of place, with me sitting on one side of him, a fat man telling Pat and Mike jokes on the other side, and a barbershop quartet practicing quietly across the aisle.
- barbershop quartet that sang
- hear a barbershop quartet
- part of a barbershop quartet
Examples
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It's a barbershop quartet!
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"Or a reggae barbershop quartet," Armelia answered, and then she looked at me.
Fiction book (1994) -
Her sitter had a cold, and her dad was at his barbershop quartet convention.
Fiction book (1997) -
Back when I was in that barbershop quartet in Skokie, Illinois.
Fiction book (1996) -
That was how I ended up in a barbershop quartet in Skokie, Illinois.
Fiction book (1996) -
Jenkins likens the tuning process to selectively listening to the tenor in a barbershop quartet.
Blog text (5) -
I decided that a war on another continent could not really touch anybody here, not these psychiatrists with their identical little mustaches, or these wives who sat listening to the barbershop quartet of male voices around them, or even me.
Fiction book (1997) -
And since the economic engine is driven by football revenue, people buying No. 16 jerseys by the boatload were making things hum like a perfectly tuned barbershop quartet.
Blog text (16) -
The barbershop quartet performed beautifully at the wedding, enchanting everyone with their close four-part harmony.
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During the festival, a talented barbershop quartet sang nostalgic songs that brought back fond memories.
Synonyms
30
3.5
A group of four musicians who play or sing together
A group of four musicians or singers who perform together
Surface Forms
Morphology
barbershop + quartet
A B1 learner who knows 'quartet' (a group of four singers/musicians) and 'barbershop' (the shop or style associated with barbers) can reasonably infer this denotes a four-person singing group linked to the barbershop style. However, the specific conventional features of the genre (a cappella, close four-part harmony, often male, sentimental repertoire) are culturally specific and not fully predictable from the constituents alone, so full meaning requires some exposure.
Etymology
Barbershop quartet comes from a simple, old picture: one popular story says men in early barbershop shops would sing together while waiting for haircuts, and four voices made a rich, close sound. The name joins barbershop (the place) and quartet (four singers), so today it means 'a group of four singers who sing in close harmony'.