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).”
“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.”
“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.”
“That of the kithara ie. the classical lyre is an interesting case.”
“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.”
“In the middle, on a raised platform, Apollo plucked at his kithara, a seven-stringed lyre, while Dionysus blew on his double-reeded aulos.”
“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.”
“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".”
“Bacchylides paced behind me, carrying the kithara.”
“I got rid of my kithara, and went and laid my hand on her shoulder.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘kithara’.
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Zing Went the Strings
lute, guitar, mandolin, violin, banjo, balalaika, sitar, pipa, autoharp, zither, kantele, guqin and 329 more...
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Learned (or Encountered) in Reading
I have a list for words learned from Newsweek; here's where I keep all the stuff from other shit I read.
Except when I'm looking stuff up and find new words that way. Those go on their...cellie, laminectomy, mridangam, terroir, hypospadias, crus, corpora cavernosa, crura, uretheral meatus, bartholin's gland, coloquintida, colopexy and 921 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for kithara.
chained_bear 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)
Nov 3, 2008
reesetee See cithara. Mar 17, 2008