Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Plural of crotalum.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Thereupon an immense shout arose; the cymbals and crotala sounded more loudly, the tabourines thundered, and the great purple canopy sank between the two pylons.

    Salammbo 2003

  • They stood ranged along the rampart, striking tabourines, playing lyres, and shaking crotala, while the rays of the sun, setting behind them in the mountains of Numidia, shot between the strings of their lyres over which their naked arms were stretched.

    Salammbo 2003

  • The clack, clack, clack of the foils was the beating of the Sphigxdrum that called men to war, the rattle of crotala that led the dance, a dance in which every movement had to be as quick as possible.

    Nightside The Long Sun Wolfe, Gene 1993

  • Men sometimes danced with great spirit, bounding from the ground more in the manner of Europeans than of an Eastern people; on which occasions the music was not always composed of many instruments, but consisted only of _crotala_ or maces, a man clapping his hand, and a woman snapping her fingers to the time.

    Museum of Antiquity A Description of Ancient Life

  • In Juvenal, I can hear confusedly the death-rattles of the gladiators; Tacitus has sentences that resemble the drapery of a laticlave, and some of Horace's verses are like the body of a Greek slave, with supple undulations, and short and long syllables that sound like crotala.

    Over Strand and Field Gustave Flaubert 1850

  • _tympanum_, the _crotala_, the _cimbals_, and the like, as well as to songs, being a kind of small dramatic compositions, or what may properly be called _ballads_, which is a true word for

    A Treatise on the Art of Dancing Giovanni-Andrea Gallini 1766

  • a song, to which the men responded; though 3 appears as if about to throw something which 2 is preparing to catch, or striking crotala.

    A History of Art for Beginners and Students Painting, Sculpture, Architecture Clara Erskine Clement Waters 1875

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