electric guitar

American

noun

a guitar equipped with electric or magnetic pickups that permit its sound to be amplified and fed to a loudspeaker.

electric guitar British

noun

an electronically amplified guitar, used mainly in pop music Compare acoustic guitar

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

electric guitars

plural

Etymology

Origin of electric guitar

First recorded in 1935–40

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:

electric guitar

In one corner stood his electric guitar, plugged into an amplifier.

From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2026

Together, amid recorded bursts of electric guitar, they kinetically update these rival combatants.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026

He played the electric guitar and was part of a band called Section 8, which would perform at bars along the East Coast.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 10, 2026

Every song that you know of Van Halen, I heard from an unplugged-in electric guitar from four inches away, going, “Too long.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 26, 2026

Parrots really respond to electric guitar, she thought.

From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023