Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A small instrument with bellows like an accordion but with buttons in place of keys.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A musical instrument invented by Professor Wheatstone, the principle of which is similar to that of the accordion.

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

  • noun A small musical instrument on the principle of the accordion. It is a small elastic box, or bellows, having free reeds on the inside, and keys and handles on the outside of each of the two hexagonal heads.

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

  • noun music A musical instrument, like the various accordions, that is a member of the free-reed family of musical instruments, typically having buttons on both ends.
  • noun Something resembling a concertina, such as a folded book, a bus door or a set of picture frames that are folded together.
  • noun A type of booklet label, consisting of up to 32 pages of booklet as an insert.
  • verb to become compressed into a shape reminiscent of a concertina
  • verb to be drawn closer and farther apart repeatedly, or up and down, as if situated on a working concertina's folds

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun coiled barbed wire used as an obstacle
  • noun free-reed instrument played like an accordion by pushing its ends together to force air through the reeds
  • verb collapse like a concertina

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[concert + Italian -ina, feminine diminutive suff.]

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Examples

  • I'd like to see these communists tarred, feathered, roped in concertina, and dunped just south of the US international border.

    An Important Revelation 2008

  • The sight of this, Alda declared, made her ill; though the little boy was as docile as he was helpless; but it was quite true that to nerves and ears not inured from the first, Theodore's humming and his concertina were a trial from their perpetuity.

    The Pillars of the House, V1 Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

  • The concertina, which is somewhat like an accordion but smaller and with buttons but no keys, has a well-deserved reputation for being hard to learn.

    StarTribune.com rss feed 2010

  • The concertina, which is somewhat like an accordion but smaller and with buttons but no keys, has a well-deserved reputation for being hard to learn.

    StarTribune.com rss feed 2010

  • The concertina, which is somewhat like an accordion but smaller and with buttons but no keys, has a well-deserved reputation for being hard to learn.

    StarTribune.com rss feed 2010

  • The concertina, which is somewhat like an accordion but smaller and with buttons but no keys, has a well-deserved reputation for being hard to learn.

    StarTribune.com rss feed 2010

  • The humidifier needs a replaceable 'wick' - a kind of concertina-like filter.

    Epinions Recent Content for Home 2009

  • There is a minimum range which if the hoard was able to reach would require the artillery be either moved or abandoned, but the numbers destroyed up to that point would be huge Also, though a theoretical zombie hoard would be able to overcome conventional countermobility measures such as concertina wire or barbed wire entanglements by simply climbing over the zombies entangled in the obstacle, arranging such defenses in depth would deplete the horde as more and more of the zombies became part of the landscape.

    StrategyPage.com 2009

  • Kind of like building high walls, installing concertina wire and setting an alarm when I go to bed.

    Secure Parking Lots 2009

  • Kind of like building high walls, installing concertina wire and setting an alarm when I go to bed.

    Secure Parking Lots 2009

Comments

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  • US Railway Association, Standard Cipher Code, 1906: The term concertina stood for the phrase "There is no competition" in the language of railroad telegraphers.

    January 21, 2013