hurdy-gurdy
Americannoun
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hurdy-gurdies
plural
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a barrel organ or similar musical instrument played by turning a crank.
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a lute- or guitar-shaped stringed musical instrument sounded by the revolution against the strings of a rosined wheel turned by a crank.
noun
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any mechanical musical instrument, such as a barrel organ
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a medieval instrument shaped like a viol in which a rosined wheel rotated by a handle sounds the strings
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of hurdy-gurdy
1740–50; variant of Scots hirdy-girdy uproar, influencedby hurly-burly
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:
He loves to headbang while playing the hurdy-gurdy, an instrument he picked up in 2010 and later employed in the “Black Sails” show and “God of War: Ragnarok” video game.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
The following “RV Envy” adds the thwack of a full drum kit to the mix, and the staticky howl of the hurdy-gurdy is as hectic as a smashed window triggering a building’s alarm system.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 3, 2026
Its melancholy, hurdy-gurdy score, exaggerated sound design, ritual ensemble dances, inexorable camera moves suggest a dry run for Tarr’s 1994 masterpiece, the immersive, seven-hour “Satantango” — at less than one-third the length.
From New York Times ● Oct. 29, 2020
“Without you knowing about it, there can be hundreds or thousands of musical niches – from hurdy-gurdy players to kora players to pedal steel players.”
From The Guardian ● May 2, 2019
We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God.
From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
To hear their early recordings in particular is to hear the timbres of the shawms, sackbuts and hurdy-gurdies of early instrumental music, rendered vocally.
From New York Times ● Jun. 25, 2011
He brought a bit of everything with him: lutes, gambas, hurdy-gurdies, psalteries, fancy carved music stands and even a serpent, an old wind instrument that looks like its namesake.
From New York Times ● Jun. 15, 2011
His 28-piece orchestra drones out Verdi's melodies like possessed hurdy-gurdies.
From Time Magazine Archive
Their tunes are whistled in the street, clunked out by hurdy-gurdies on the curb.
From Time Magazine Archive
Beethoven and Mozart may be fine, but I like the kind that the newsboys whistle and all the hurdy-gurdies play.”
From Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall by Vosburgh, R. G.
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.
