pedal steel

noun

variants or pedal steel guitar
plural pedal steels or pedal steel guitars
: a box-shaped electric steel guitar with legs that has usually 10 strings which can be altered in pitch by the use of pedals and which are plucked while being pressed with a movable steel bar
[Ben] Keith broke into the business playing pedal steel on Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces" …Kevin Dettmar
compare hawaiian guitar, lap steel

Examples of pedal steel in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web And for Faye Webster, that instrument is pedal steel guitar in particular. Angie Martoccio, Rolling Stone, 16 Mar. 2024 An extended instrumental coda appears after a passage of silence, and suddenly the pedal steel and soft percussion provide transcendent levels of yacht-rock breeziness. Joshua Minsoo Kim, Rolling Stone, 28 Feb. 2024 The application of a fiddle or banjo or pedal steel to an otherwise straightforward pop or rock song does not necessarily country music make, and Urban, to his credit, more or less didn’t present himself as anything other than an arena rock act for his time in Dallas. Preston Jones, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 31 Jan. 2024 His voice had lots of reverb and there was instrumentation backing his vocals, including plenty of pedal steel. William Earl, Variety, 11 Feb. 2024 Combs' bandmate Kurt Ozan was brought on to play pedal steel. Brenton Blanchet, Peoplemag, 9 Feb. 2024 Over soaring pedal steel, Lenderman places his performance among other similarly bathetic scenes: a bird singing while trapped in a hardware store, a declaration of love whose speaker knows it’s hackneyed but delivers it anyway. Pitchfork, 4 Dec. 2023 This iconic image was shot on Nov. 5, 1973, when Young and his band the Santa Monica Flyers — guitarist Nils Lofgren, pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith, and the Crazy Horse rhythm section of drummer Ralph Molina and bassist Billy Talbot — performed at the Rainbow Theatre in London. Angie Martoccio, Rolling Stone, 14 Apr. 2023 The group soon expanded to include them, along with pedal steel guitarist Ran Anderson and sister hula dancers Alana and Alyssa Godoy. George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 Jan. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pedal steel.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1965, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of pedal steel was in 1965

Dictionary Entries Near pedal steel

Cite this Entry

“Pedal steel.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedal%20steel. Accessed 29 Mar. 2024.

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