wind instrument

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A musical instrument, such as a clarinet, trumpet, or harmonica, in which sound is produced by the movement of an enclosed column of air, especially the breath, and excluding keyboard instruments such as the organ or accordion. Woodwind and brass instruments are both types of wind instruments.
2. n. Informal A woodwind instrument, as opposed to a brass instrument.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A musical instrument the sound of which is produced by a stream of compressed air, usually by the breath. Chief of such instruments is the human voice. Wind-instruments blown by the breath are divided into two classes: wood wind-instruments, including the flute, flageolet, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, English horn, etc.; and brass or metal wind-instruments, including the trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba, ophicleide, etc. Wind-instruments sounded by air mechanically compressed include the pipeorgan and the reed-organ, together with the bagpipe, and, in a certain sense, the Æolian harp. The method of tone-production in all these instruments, except the last, is either the vibration induced in a stream of air by directing it against a sharp edge, as in the fiute and in fluepipes in the organ, or the vibration induced in an elastic tongue or reed in or over an orifice through which a stream of air is driven, as in the voice, the clarinet, and the reed-organ. Sometimes both methods are used in the same instrument, as in the pipe-organ.

Wiktionary

1. n. a musical instrument that produces sound when air flows through it; reed instruments and brass instruments.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. an instrument of music sounded by means of wind, especially by means of the breath, as a flute, a clarinet, etc.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a musical instrument in which the sound is produced by an enclosed column of air that is moved by the breath