The bassoon or a double-reed woodwind instrument, particularly in Italian musical terminology; the principal bass woodwind of the orchestra.
From Italian fagotto, derived from fagot (bundle of sticks), because the reed structure resembled bundled reeds or sticks. The instrument developed in Renaissance Italy and was named descriptively before becoming standardized in orchestral music.
Italian musicians looked at the double-reed structure of early bassoons and thought 'that looks like a bundle of sticks'—so they named it fagotto, and the name stuck across Europe!
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