> Which musical instrument gets its name from the Italian word meaning soft?And the answer: piano. One of the first fortepianosThe piano is actually a nickname from the longerItalian word fortepiano. In Italian, piano means "soft," while forte means"loud." The piano was invented after musicians who played the harpsichord wantedbetter volume control.Even the harpsichord doesn't come as the first of its kind – the instrumentdescended from an ancient practice of string plucking to create music. Thepiano's original ancestor is known as the monochord, a single string stretchedover a sound box and with a movable bridge. The monochord dates back to 6th century B.C. as a scientific instrument for measuring musical intervals. Eventually, a family of stringed instruments with a keyboard evolved in Europein the 14th century. The earliest of these was a dulcimer, a closed shallow boxover which stretched wires were struck with two wooden hammers. The dulcimer ledto the development of the clavichord, which also appeared in the 14th century.These were followed by the spinet, virginal, clavecin, gravicembalo, and,finally, the harpsichord in the 15th century.In 1709, a man named Bartolomeo Cristofori decided he had had enough. TheItalian harpsichord maker devised a new instrument that hammered on to thestring instead of plucking it, to create soft and loud tones. This inventioncreated room for instrumental variance, and was named gravicembalo col piano eforte (roughly “soft and loud keyboard instrument”). After he showcased theearly piano in Florence, the world couldn't get enough. Some 300 years later,the piano remains an essential element of music across the globe. To compare the sound of the piano with its predecessors, check out the videobelow: