What does "troubadour" mean?

An itinerant composer and performer of songs in medieval Europe; a jongleur or travelling minstrel.

What is a synonym for "troubadour"?

Common synonyms include: folk singer, ahasuerus, ancient mariner, arch-poet, argonaut, ballad maker.

Pronounced //ˈtruːbəˌdɔː//.

//ˈtruːbəˌdɔː// noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Noun

1
An itinerant composer and performer of songs in medieval Europe; a jongleur or travelling minstrel.
"Sitting in the courtroom ..., their laptops and tablets propped before them, power cables snaking through convoluted adapters, the Twitterati have sight of witnesses at all times – the troubadours, or perhaps the tricoteuses, of the digital revolution."
2
a singer of folk songs wordnet

"A female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz."

From Old Occitan trobar (“to find”) via Old French troubadour. Piecewise doublet of trouveur.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.