Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A guitar of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An old instrument of the guitar kind strung with wire; a cithern.
- To play upon a gittern.
Wiktionary
- n. A relatively small, quill-plucked, gut-strung musical instrument, a predecessor of the guitar, that originated around the 13th century and came to Europe via Moorish Spain.
- v. To play on the gittern.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An instrument like a guitar.
- v. To play on gittern.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a 16th century musical instrument resembling a guitar with a pear-shaped soundbox and wire strings
Etymologies
- From Old French guiterne, ultimately from Old Spanish guitarra. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English giterne, from Old French guiterne, from Latin cithara; see cithara. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The musical group consisted of the tervardi, two hertasi playing drums, and four Tayledras who played harp, gittern, flute, and some sort of horn, respectively.”
“He put his gittern into the stand by touch and knelt to blow the fire to flame.”
“The bard played a soft melody on his gittern as Lord Kemoc seemed to doze, the golden firelight flickering over both of them.”
“Lauren held his peace, flattening his palm over the strings of his gittern so that not even a breath of draft would set them murmuring.”
“Gwena, the dark girl, flashed dazzling white teeth in a vulpine grin, plucked a gittern from somewhere behind her, and began.”
“It might at one time have been a lute or a gittern or some such thing; there was no trace at all of its original finish, nor its strings or tuning pegs, and it had probably not been playable for centuries.”
“The warmth must have reached him, for as she reached the chorus, he shook himself, and suddenly his harp joined the jaunty chords of her gittern as his voice joined hers in harmony.”
“She'd been pierced with the sharp ends of nails and wire so often that her finger-ends looked like pincushions, and it was just as well that they were not going to be playing their instruments for a while, for her fingers needed to heal before she picked up her gittern or harp again.”
“Stefen stood up and slung his gittern case over one shoulder before replying.”
“The gittern was there, though, and the mare - so Andros just sighed, and assumed he'd gone off for a walk.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gittern’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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EN-HU - important words for a HU inte...
Words only (I left out the expressions) from Geza Kerenyi's EN-HU interpreters' dictionary. Most of them pose some difficulty when interpreted between HU and EN in either or both directions.
abalone, abrasive, abstractionist, abstruse, abysmal, academia, accessibility, accessible, acclimate, accolade, accompanist, achiever and 1469 more...
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ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
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string alongs (and shorts too)
string instruments and instrumentation
zither, guitar, bouzouki, rebec, violin, cithara, fiddle, fidicinal, twang, fret, gadulka, maqui and 54 more...
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My Favorite Instruments
I love their sounds as well as their names!
guitar, piano, harpsichord, grand harp, lute, hammered dulcimer, flute, violin, oboe, clarinet, cittern, dobro and 33 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for gittern.
bilby rt, zing! Aug 30, 2008