tambourine
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of tambourine
1570–80; earlier tamboryne < Middle Dutch tamborijn small drum < Middle French tambourin or Medieval Latin tamborīnum. See tambour, -ine 1
Explanation
The tambourine is a portable percussion instrument that you shake or strike against your leg or palm. If you want to be in a band with your friends but you don't know how to play an instrument, you could try playing the tambourine. Tambourines are round and look like shallow drums (sometimes with an actual drumhead) with several pairs of metal disks that jingle against each other when you shake or tap the tambourine. The earliest meaning of tambourine was "small drum," from the diminutive of the French tambour, "drum."
Vocabulary lists containing tambourine
Musical Instruments - Introductory
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Musical Instruments - Middle School
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Musical Instruments - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
One month after Dylan released Mr Tambourine Man, the Byrds' version came out.
From BBC • Jan. 19, 2025
“Sometimes at the end of a shift, when we were all saying good night, he would grab a line from somewhere — including a favorite of his from Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
From Seattle Times • May 10, 2024
That hybrid found its first recorded expression after Mr. Dickson acquired an acetate of a new Bob Dylan song, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” in August 1964.
From New York Times • Jan. 19, 2023
A bag of fan mail from 1966, Bruce Langhorn’s Turkish drum that inspired Dylan to write “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a postcard from Pete Seeger saying he never really minded when Dylan “went electric.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 11, 2022
Remizov's Tambourine and his other stories of this class are realistic, they are "representations of real life," of "byt", but their Realism is very different from the traditional Russian realism.
From Tales of the Wilderness by Pilniak, Boris
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
