concertina
Americannoun
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a musical instrument resembling an accordion but having buttonlike keys, hexagonal bellows and ends, and a more limited range.
verb (used without object)
verb (used with object)
adjective
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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concertinasimple
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concertinassimple
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have concertinaedperfect
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has concertinaedperfect
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am concertinaingprogressive
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are concertinaingprogressive
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is concertinaingprogressive
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have been concertinaingperfect progressive
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has been concertinaingperfect progressive
Past
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concertinaedsimple
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had concertinaedperfect
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was concertinaingprogressive
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were concertinaingprogressive
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had been concertinaingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of concertina
Apparently coined by the original instrument's inventor, English instrument-maker Charles Wheatstone (1802–75), who patented it in 1829; cf. concertino, seraphina a similar instrument
Vocabulary lists containing concertina
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.
See Examples For:
Their songs weave in Irish lilting, set against a lively mix of drums, fiddles, flutes, harps, banjos, cello and concertina - skills honed over years of playing house parties, pub céilís and traditional festivals.
From BBC ● May 16, 2026
Behind the concertina wire encircling the bases, Germans could experience American bowling alleys and drive-in theaters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 13, 2026
May’s next film, “The Heartbreak Kid,” adapted from a Neil Simon hit and co-starring her daughter Jeannie Berlin, is a beautifully calibrated and funny social critique wrapped in concertina wire.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2024
After weeks of desperation, migrants pass a toddler under a tangle of concertina wire strung across the edge of U.S. soil.
From Seattle Times ● May 6, 2024
She says that crews are busy locking away the beaches behind a network of concertina wire and huge wooden jacks called chevaux de frise.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
For the journey to London, the stand – which concertinas down into a relatively small space – will be put into an aluminium crate that regulates temperature and humidity.
From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2026
The museum, opened in October 2011, now has more than 400 accordions, flutinas, concertinas and other related artifacts, ephemera and memorabilia, dating from 1820 to the present day.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 14, 2015
Literature, she says, has the potential to give us texts in which “the experiences of the old unfold and collapse back, like concertinas, into narratives that are rarely reducible to age itself.”
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 1, 2015
No restaurateur or chef worth his Himalayan salt will fail to conjure up the image of the tiny, colorful village, with its exotic, weather-hardened inhabitants speaking Gaelic and playing concertinas in a musky, ancient tavern.
From Time ● Aug. 10, 2011
Stopping outside the shop, I stood a few minutes gazing in at its window, which was filled with a miscellaneous collection: teapots, telescopes, knives, spoons, pipes, and one or two flutes and concertinas.
From Chatterbox, 1905. by Various
Yesterday, over 18 painstaking hours, teams of French and British conservators and British Museum staff unfurled the 70-metre long artwork from the folding stand where it had been concertinaed, surrounded by protective mattress-type padding.
From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026
Their third-floor apartment now sits at eye level, crushed under piles of concertinaed concrete slabs from the OPP 26 building in coastal Caraballeda, one of the districts hardest hit by the quakes.
From Barron's ● Jul. 6, 2026
"You'll end up with a concertinaed heap at the bottom."
From BBC ● Feb. 16, 2025
In the lift, once the doors have concertinaed closed, he says cheerily to another doctor: “This young lady has come to discuss a donation her family have made to the department.”
From The Guardian ● Jun. 3, 2017
But she had died, nine years ago, and his father had contracted, as if a weight had settled on him and concertinaed him downward and inward.
From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell
“The biggest issue is we have heard and read many comments about poverty and the concertinaing of wealth in fewer and fewer hands,” said Peters.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 19, 2017
Then Beetle, concertinaing his books, observed to Winton, 'When King's really on tap he's an interestin' dog.
From A Diversity of Creatures by Kipling, Rudyard
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.
