Definitions

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

  • noun A four- or five-stringed Chinese lute.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A genus of aglossal tailless amphibians, typical of the family Pipidæ. P. americana or surinamensis, the Surinam toad, is the only species.
  • noun [lowercase] A toad of the genus Pipa.

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

  • noun (Zoöl.) The Surinam toad (Pipa Americana), noted for its peculiar breeding habits.

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

  • noun a pear-shaped plucked lute from China.

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

  • noun type genus of the Pipidae

Etymologies

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

[Mandarin pípá, from Early Middle Chinese bji baɨ, of Iranian origin; akin to Persian barbaṭ, from Middle Persian barbut.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Mandarin 琵琶 (pípa)

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Examples

  • Chew quickly recognized Tyler's talent and recruited him to join her Purple Silk music program, where students learn to sing Chinese songs and play traditional instruments such as a two-string violin called an erhu, a four-stringed lute known as a pipa and a bamboo flute called a dizi.

    SFGate: Top News Stories By TERENCE CHEA 2011

  • Chew quickly recognized Tyler's talent and recruited him to join her Purple Silk music program, where students learn to sing Chinese songs and play traditional instruments such as a two-string violin called an erhu, a four-stringed lute known as a pipa and a bamboo flute called a dizi.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Huffington Post News Editors 2011

  • Chew quickly recognized Tyler's talent and recruited him to join her Purple Silk music program, where students learn to sing Chinese songs and play traditional instruments such as a two-string violin called an erhu, a four-stringed lute known as a pipa and a bamboo flute called a dizi.

    StarTribune.com rss feed 2011

  • Chew quickly recognized Tyler's talent and recruited him to join her Purple Silk music program, where students learn to sing Chinese songs and play traditional instruments such as a two-string violin called an erhu, a four-stringed lute known as a pipa and a bamboo flute called a dizi.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2011

  • Chew quickly recognized Tyler's talent and recruited him to join her Purple Silk music program, where students learn to sing Chinese songs and play traditional instruments such as a two-string violin called an erhu, a four-stringed lute known as a pipa and a bamboo flute called a dizi.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2011

  • (known as pipa in Chinese) piled up at Mercat St. Joseph in Barcelona. word of the month (not quite sure exactly which month this was).

    blog.khymos.org 2009

  • Jane Ira Bloom played soprano saxophone I have a thing for the saxophone which explains my crush on Jimmy Sommers and Min Xiao-Fen plays the Chinese pipa which is also an instrument that kind of looks like a weird guitar.

    The Fine Art of Improvisation Elizabeth Kerri Mahon 2008

  • All the people, animals and outbuilding and the big house survived but I did have to send out a "pipa" and the firemen came also.

    fires 2006

  • Jane Ira Bloom played soprano saxophone I have a thing for the saxophone which explains my crush on Jimmy Sommers and Min Xiao-Fen plays the Chinese pipa which is also an instrument that kind of looks like a weird guitar.

    Archive 2008-05-01 Elizabeth Kerri Mahon 2008

  • The ambitious menu features exotic fare such as pipa virtuoso Wu Man, who performs traditional music rarely seen in urban regions of China, let alone outside the country, as well as international superstars from the "Class of 1978" (the first classically trained musicians to graduate conservatory after China's devastating Cultural Revolution).

    Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories 2009

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