guitar
[gi-tahr]
- a stringed musical instrument with a long, fretted neck, a flat, somewhat violinlike body, and typically six strings, which are plucked with the fingers or with a plectrum.
Show More
Origin of guitar
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for guitar
Contemporary Examples
He played it through once, singing the lyrics softly to his own guitar accompaniment.
How Martin Luther King Jr. Influenced Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’Peter Guralnick
December 28, 2014
The guitar is tuned to E, and an Eminor chord on a guitar just rings and rings forever.
This performance of Bob Dylan's 1971 blues tune features Clapton on guitar.
Sid Vicious is stomping all over Steve Jones, about to smash in his guitar (again).
‘All Good Cretins Go to Heaven’: Dee Dee Ramone’s Twisted Punk PaintingsMelissa Leon
December 15, 2014
He captures Ramone and his second wife, Barbara, together in the studio in one photo, him on bass, her on guitar.
‘All Good Cretins Go to Heaven’: Dee Dee Ramone’s Twisted Punk PaintingsMelissa Leon
December 15, 2014
Historical Examples
Down the middle of the guitar there is a walled enclosure of the shape of a banjo.
The ManxmanHall Caine
Gino got out a guitar and sang too, sitting out on the loggia.
Where Angels Fear to TreadE. M. Forster
What good fortune it was to have saved your guitar from shipwreck!
Roland CashelCharles James Lever
Jackson made a brusque movement, and accidentally touched the guitar.
Tales of UnrestJoseph Conrad
This, from the moment we had heard Manuel's guitar, had been my idea.
RomanceJoseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
guitar
- music a plucked stringed instrument originating in Spain, usually having six strings, a flat sounding board with a circular sound hole in the centre, a flat back, and a fretted fingerboard. Range: more than three octaves upwards from E on the first leger line below the bass staffSee also electric guitar, bass guitar, Hawaiian guitar
Show More
Word Origin
C17: from Spanish guitarra, from Arabic qītār, from Greek kithara cithara
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
Word Origin and History for guitar
n.
1620s, ultimately from Greek kithara "cithara," a stringed musical instrument related to the lyre, perhaps from Persian sihtar (see sitar); the name reached English several times, including early 14c. giterne, in reference to various stringed, guitar-like instruments; the modern word is directly from Spanish guittara, from Arabic qitar, from the Greek.
Show More
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
guitar
A stringed musical instrument (see strings) usually played by strumming or plucking. Guitars are widely used in folk music and, often amplified electronically, in country and western music and rock 'n' roll.
Show More
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.