Definitions

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

  • noun anatomy, dated The middle portion of the ventral surface of the fornix of the brain; so called from the arrangement of the lines with which it is marked in the human brain.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • They just want holiday, iron clad job security, something called lyra?

    Toward A Better Online Petition Michael Arrington 2005

  • The small lyre was like the tenor viola di braccio and was called the lyra di braccio.

    Some Forerunners of Italian Opera 1896

  • This instrument is entitled "lyra" in the manuscript.

    Some Forerunners of Italian Opera 1896

  • As late as the time of Prætorius's great work (Syntagma Musicum) the word "lyra" was used to designate certain instruments of close relationship to the viol family.

    Some Forerunners of Italian Opera 1896

  • Played on the eponymous three-stringed, pear-shaped instrument (it looks like a small violin, but is held upright on the knee and bowed horizontally) and accompanied by verses of rhyming couplets (or mantinades) that are "rapped", Crete's musical legacy has a rough quality – not unlike tsikoudia, the local firewater that's served at lyra gigs.

    Insiders' guide to Greece 2011

  • Labyrinth in Houdetsi hosts the Irish-born lyra aficionado Ross Daly's lyra and lute workshops, while further south are the party hot-spots, where clubs like Zig Zag in Malia (Malia St) and The Matrix in Hersonissos (Eleftheriou Venizelou St) play DJ Omeyocan's remixes of Cretan hits.

    Insiders' guide to Greece 2011

  • The tastefulness of his treble viol playing and the more resonant, lower lyra viol is fetching, and his rhythmic liveliness is always in evidence, but 28 dances are slightly too much of a very good thing.

    Jordi Savall: The Celtic Viol II – review Nicholas Kenyon 2010

  • To see why lyra is back in a big way, kick off in Chania, just down the road from Stavros, where Zorba the Greek was filmed.

    Insiders' guide to Greece 2011

  • Cedar Stevens is hooping upside down while hanging from a lyra at a C.U. @Circus gathering in Austin, Texas.

    Hooping.org | Blog | Cedar Stevens 2009

  • Heraklion also hosts an arts festival from July to September with plenty of live lyra, while the Aerakis Music store Daidalou St stocks a huge range of Cretan music, many of the artists signed to this legendary store's own label.

    Insiders' guide to Greece 2011

  • I started taking classes in 2015 — first, aerial silks, and then, by the end of 2017, I was doing lyra, which is the aerial hoop.

    How a Former Astronomer Keeps Moving Web Behrens Photograph by Lisa Predko 2023

Comments

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  • Like lycra, without the drug-abusing cyclists and music video tarts.

    November 20, 2007

  • "Lyra, the Harp, in astronomy, a constellation of the northern hemisphere, containing, according to the Britannic catalogue, 21 stars."

    Falconer's New Universal Dictionary of the Marine (1816), 250

    October 14, 2008

  • The other night, Feeley hosted one of her last lessons on the trapeze rigging in her apartment. Her student was Violet Oliphant O’Neill, an artist who paints large-scale backdrops for photographers. Feeley sat inside the steel hoop, called a lyra, in a black onesie with a skeleton design.
    Gabriel Packard, Little Big Top, New Yorker (Jan. 28, 2019)

    February 4, 2019