Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A hand-held goatskin drum used in traditional Irish music and often played with a stick.
Wiktionary
- n. A type of frame drum used in Celtic music, which was, by tradition, struck with an animal bone to produce its sound, now more usually this is wood.
Etymologies
- Irish bodhrán, from Irish bodhor ("soft or dull sounding") or Irish bodhar ("deaf") (Wiktionary)
- Irish Gaelic bodhrán, from Middle Irish bodrán, from Old Irish, from bodar, deaf, deafening. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The scholar Eric Lott has noted, “The very instrumentation of minstrel bands followed this pattern: the banjo and jawbone were black, while the fiddle, bones, and tambourine derived perhaps from an instrument called the bodhran were Irish.””
“And with a bodhran, which is a hard word to spell, so it is!”
“A modern day rockabilly queen, May breathes new life into an old genre, and her use of a bodhran is a quirky touch that fits her highly percussive sound to a T. 's 24-year-old bright young thing Victoria Hesketh AKA Little Boots is being tipped by the”
“Emulating a bodhran is a great way to "learn" irish rythm, and when you do it live ...”
“And then I was like wait, but I have the djembe and the bodhran.”
“A fiddler or two, I think one on bodhran but it was very low key and background.”
“To Myron Bretholz, a gifted player and teacher of the bodhran a hand-held Irish frame drum who lives in Baltimore and was CIAW artistic director in 2001, prestige alone doesn't explain its full appeal.”
“I play the piano, bagpipes, bodhran (a type of Irish drum), the tin whistle, the guitar, and the harp.”
“A discreet virtuoso, Yates adapts skipping folk-fiddle melodies to trumpet, flugelhorn and tenor horn, and his engaging themes – full of light, fluttering figures – are compatibly supported by Bende's bell-like chording and Byrne's galloping low-register sounds on the bodhran drum and Latin-American cajon.”
“I dislike the black leather sofa (it says "executive office" to me, when this place is surely all about switching off) and the orb lights could be suspended by something more sympathetic than metres of nasty white flex, but we like the witty addition of an acoustic guitar and bodhran hanging on the wall.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bodhran’.
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noble mythical words
halcyon, yore, chevalier, geas, dour, clarion, codex, selkie, mythic, rime, hoarfrost, eldritch and 112 more...
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Words and phrases of Irish origin, or...
not necessarily eponyms, but might be
boycott, blarney, banshee, galore, keen, donnybrook, colleen, drumlin, phoney, clan, cairn, ceili and 122 more...
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The Pogues
transmetropolitan, lecher, queer, shite, whore, bastard, spew, bloody, waxie's dargle, farthing, pint, races and 91 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (B)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
balcony, bailey, baguette, bairn, balalaika, baldric, balefire, baby's breath, ballet, balm of gilead, balsam, baluster and 188 more...
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plutoman's list
fossick, rat's razoo, barmy, bohemian, talisman, tagada tsoin-tsoin, ponsonby, badugi, ombudsman, obfuscate, zombie, forgettory and 56 more...
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Musical Instruments
Collect them all!
dulcimer, french horn, didgeridoo, zither, tympani, djembe, xylophone, vibraphone, singing bowl, bagpipes, banjo, guitar and 66 more...
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to the melody of
Words in music.
melody, violin, pianissimo, orchestra, crescendo, arpeggio, nocturno minore, octave, viola, accordion, bodhran, tarantella and 3 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bodhran.
chained_bear Since it's not in my dictionaries... From www.ceolas.org:
This ancient framedrum is traditionally made with a wooden body and a goat-skin head, and is played with a double-headed stick called a cipín, tipper, or beater. The modern Irish word bodhrán is properly pronounced bow-rawn, like Cow brawn, with a slight emphasis on the first syllable.
Usage:
There was Harry the banjo and Dunne of the swan
With whose bone from the wing he'd beat the bodhran
And the song that he'd sing was of ganders and all
He'd never get drunk but stay sober...
--"Gartloney Rats," the Pogues, c. 1989 Terry Woods Feb 7, 2007