to play the accordion
5
5.5
- phrasal verb
:
tocar el acordeón
- During the concert, she will play the accordion while the audience claps along.
- learn to play the accordion
- sing and play the accordion
- played the accordion for years
Examples
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Do you still play the accordion?
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I heard he plays the accordion.
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We're here to play the accordion too!
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I wonder if I can play the accordion, too.
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Well, it's my life, and I wanna make music and I wanna play the accordion.
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Kate does not play the accordion.
Blog text (9) -
On warm nights, she could sit out on the white marble steps and listen to someone down the street play the accordion.
Fiction book (1997) -
Son, when you play the accordion, you are a one-man band.
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Mary Cougan played the accordion after dinner, and we sang all the old songs.
Fiction book (1995) -
My grandpa played the accordion and graced us with his music during each visit.
Blog text (2)
Antonyms
- Archaic
To stop doing an activity, especially to stop playing music for good
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to perform music using an accordion' is directly derivable from combining 'play' (to perform music) with 'accordion' (a musical instrument); 'the' is a simple definite article and adds no idiomatic meaning. This verb + instrument object pattern is highly compositional and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily understand the MWE.
Etymology
The phrase play the accordion comes from the way the instrument is used. An accordion is a box with a folding middle that you push and pull while pressing keys or buttons to make sound, so the phrase means 'to perform music by using an accordion'.