Why I still call myself a "Tuba Player"

[Art Hovey]

Dictionary.com has no definition for “tubist”, nor does my 1956 edition of Webster's New Collegiate dictionary. (Most other online dictionaries do define it as “tuba player”, perhaps due to the efforts of Harvey Phillips) But Erik Larson mentions an older use of the word in his book Dead Wake about the last voyage of the Lusitania: In 1914 the British Admiralty under Winston Churchill established a secret “code room” to decipher German military messages sent by radio telegraph. Intercepted messages came into the basement, where they were placed in canisters which were shoved into vacuum tubes and launched up to room 40. The men who took the messages from the canisters and passed them on to the code breakers were called “Tubists”.

[bort]

I remember some previous version of MS Word used to auto-correct "tubist" as "tubbiest." I was not flattered by that, and from then on preferred "tuba player."

[Donn]

An example of Tubism:

[UDELBR]

Agree wholeheartedly: a "tubist" plays the tube.

I remember T.U.B.A. years ago had a blue-ribbon commission of washed-up academic tooobaists proclaim that "tubist" was the correct word. Since then, resistance has been futile.

[Donn]

He's not saying.

[spirtuba]

In german "tubist" is common and normal, we also say "bassist" (bass player), "cellist" (cello player), "fagottist" (bassoon player) and so on. For a german speaking person the whole discussion whether itˋs tubaist or tubist or tuba player sounds a bit strange and when the discussion came up a few years ago I remember I was confused why this is a question until I realized that "tubist" is probably not really a common english word and, maybe, borrowed from german in an unsuccessful attempt to make it popular (but that*s just a wild guess)...

[humBell]

An example of Tubism:

You have skinned my eyes...

"Thirty seconds of revelation is worth a million years of know-nothings."



(I wouldn't call myself a tuba player. They don't come when i call anyway... A tuber on the other hand...)

[MusicSmiths]

I kid the students at the middle school about being "Tuba Tooters"... yeah way before my time, but there we are...

Here's the old 1932 "Tom and Jerry" cartoon.

https://youtu.be/Ch73BpK6H1c

[Matt G]

For laypeople, it’s easier just to say “[instrument] player” in general lest you want to spend extra time in conversation.

[GC]

People who have heard me play refer to me as a tuba owner.

[jperry1466]

So is Yo-Yo Ma a celloist, or is he a cello player?

I believe he refers to himself as a cellist.

[jperry1466]

People who have heard me play refer to me as a tuba owner.

Or in my case, a tuba holder.

[roweenie]

Du bist ein Tubist wer nicht klug ist

[Teubonium]

Tuba operator

[Rick Denney]

In german "tubist" is common and normal, we also say "bassist" (bass player), "cellist" (cello player), "fagottist" (bassoon player) and so on. For a german speaking person the whole discussion whether itˋs tubaist or tubist or tuba player sounds a bit strange and when the discussion came up a few years ago I remember I was confused why this is a question until I realized that "tubist" is probably not really a common english word and, maybe, borrowed from german in an unsuccessful attempt to make it popular (but that*s just a wild guess)...

No, not borrowed from German. But the original TUBA wanted TUBA as a name for their new organization, and so needed some settlement of the issue of what single word starting with T could tuba players use to describe themselves. Hence, the formation is the august committee.

Rick "tuba player" Denney