cuatro

American  

[kwot-roh] / ˈkwɒt roʊ /

Or quatro

noun

• cuatros
  plural

1. a small guitar with four or five strings or pairs of strings, used in Latin American and Caribbean music.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• cuatros
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of cuatro

First recorded in 1900–05; from Latin American Spanish, Spanish: literally, “four”; see origin at four ( def. )

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

cuatro cuatros

Nine minutes into the performance, musician José Eduardo Santana cut through the atmosphere with his cuatro, a 10-string instrument considered the national instrument of the island.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 10, 2026

She learned how to play the cuatro from her father, whose family took refuge in Venezuela during the Spanish Civil War.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2025

One winner was Estrada, who plays pensive, largely acoustic songs using a guitar-like Venezuelan cuatro.

From New York Times ● Nov. 18, 2022

Together, they sought to preserve the minimalist energy of her live performances, in which she commands the stage, accompanied only by her voice, her lyrics and her cuatro.

From New York Times ● Jan. 24, 2022

A group of men showed up with a cuatro, a guitar, maracas, and güiros.

From "When I Was Puerto Rican" by Esmeralda Santiago

I The King Page 202 1 Veinte e cuatros, literally “twenty-fours,” aldermen or regidors in the town councils of certain towns in Andalusia.

From The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 09 of 55 1593-1597 Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of the Catholic Missions, as Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Close of the Nineteenth Century by James Alexander Robertson

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