Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as cithara, 1.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun See cithara.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative form of cithara.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word kithara.

Examples

  • And only then because he's the cousin of his house's kithara (head of house, second - or third-tier, female), and his defaulting to a reflection of his former Victorian life is considered curious and charming, so he is invited to represent house Tallart at parties and festivals, and acquiesces (with some reservations).

    Monday taliakit 2009

  • That of the kithara ie. the classical lyre is an interesting case.

    The kithara 2010

  • If it's true that the name of the kithara is ultimately from a Minoan compound meaning 'three-stringed' and containing the element *ki 'three' see Paleoglot: The kithara, then it stands to reason that the similar name, kinnor, is probably likewise Minoan in origin and containing the same petrified numeral with a different second component.

    Archive 2010-08-01 2010

  • The other one is a sistrum-like sign with the value "KI" perhaps *kithara, if we accept a transfer of meaning to "a small corded instrument".

    A Mediterranean flute wanderword 2010

  • In the middle, on a raised platform, Apollo plucked at his kithara, a seven-stringed lyre, while Dionysus blew on his double-reeded aulos.

    PERSEPHONE THE PHONY JOAN HOLUB 2010

  • If it's true that the name of the kithara is ultimately from a Minoan compound meaning 'three-stringed' and containing the element *ki 'three' see Paleoglot: The kithara, then it stands to reason that the similar name, kinnor, is probably likewise Minoan in origin and containing the same petrified numeral with a different second component.

    On to the kinnor 2010

  • Ah, I see, that's clearer than Woodard's book — the one you link'd under your kithara post — which goes with simply "before Middle Egyptian" seemingly implying "after or during Old E."

    Edward Sapir and the Philistine headdress 2010

  • Though officially labelled as "sistrum" in the CHIC database, I cannot shake the feeling that this is in fact a kithara - an original primitive one.

    The kithara 2010

  • All in all, this instrument is quite unlike the classical kithara - a dwarf version of a lyre, but the match of the initial syllable is interesting.

    The kithara 2010

  • In the middle, on a raised platform, Apollo plucked at his kithara, a seven-stringed lyre, while Dionysus blew on his double-reeded aulos.

    PERSEPHONE THE PHONY JOAN HOLUB 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • See cithara.

    March 17, 2008

  • See also kitharis for a little backstory.

    "In the seventh century B.C., however, a new form of lyre supplanted the Greek kitharis, establishing a pattern that would repeat itself over and over. The new instrument possessed a large wooden resonator and was called a kithara. It was heavier, louder, and musically more versatile than the old kitharis, and it quickly replaced that instrument, warping its name in the process. The kitharis received a new name, lyra, and was relegated to the status of folk instrument, known to common Greeks as chelys (tortoise) and to the Romans as testudo (turtle). One instrument was for the nobility, the other for the people: the first represented power, intellect, poetry, and philosophy; the other became a symbol of weakness, peasant vulgarity, popular entertainment, and the body. Again and again the boundary will be drawn along the same lines. But here, in another moment of symbolic origin, the guitar comes out on top."

    —Glenn Kurtz, Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 108

    Also,

    "The Romans adopted the kithara from the Greeks. In Roman Latin the instrument came to be called fidicula, a diminutive of fides, meaning 'strings.' As the Romans conquered Europe, they introduced the kithara or fidicula into the lives and languages of the conquered peoples.... When Rome burned in A.D. 64, Emperor Nero fiddled on a kithara, not a violin." (p. 109)

    November 3, 2008