bumper
n.— «The Konzertstuck for four horns, which will preface the BBC SSO’s performance of Manfred, also looks like being allowed to speak for itself. When, some years ago, the work was presented by another Scottish orchestra, the audience must have been baffled by the sight, at the front of the platform, of five hornists. The fifth was what has come to be called a bumper, an extra player employed to relieve the principal hornist and “bump up” the volume of tone.» —“Too much Mozart? Try the music of angels” by Conrad Wilson Ther Herald (Glasgow, Scotland) July 5, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
If you’re ever near a sundial, step closer and look for a message. Many sundials bear haunting, poetic inscriptions about the brevity of life. Plus, language development in toddlers: why and how little ones pick up the exclamation Uh-oh...
Novelist Charles Dickens and the musician Prince were very different types of artists, but they also had a lot in common. A new book chronicling their extraordinary careers becomes a larger meditation on perfectionism and creativity itself. Plus...