Cello: Grove Music Online
“The bass instrument of the violin family. In the Hornbostel-Sachs system it is classified as a bowed lute (fiddle). The violoncello’s present name means, in Italian, a ‘small large viol’, as it employs both the superlative suffix -one, and a diminutive one, -ello. Such a bizarre name suggests that its early history is not straightforward.”