mandolin
Americannoun
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mandolins
plural
noun
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a plucked stringed instrument related to the lute, having four pairs of strings tuned in ascending fifths stretched over a small light body with a fretted fingerboard. It is usually played with a plectrum, long notes being sustained by the tremolo
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a vegetable slicer consisting of a flat stainless-steel frame with adjustable cutting blades
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of mandolin
1700–10; < Italian mandolino, diminutive of mandola, variant of mandora, alteration of pandora bandore
Explanation
A mandolin is a bit like a small guitar — it's a musical instrument with a wooden body, strings, and a long neck. A musician plays a mandolin by plucking or strumming the strings. Its sound is higher than a guitar, and it's often played alongside lower-pitched instruments, such as banjos and guitars. The mandolin is popular around the world and in many different kinds of music; in the United States, it's played most often in country music. The word itself comes from the Italian mandolino, which is an altered form of the Latin pandura, or "three-stringed lute."
Vocabulary lists containing mandolin
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 used to play songs for me on the mandolin.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026
He's a massive Steelers fan, a music obsessive, and has played mandolin and guitar in bluegrass and country-rock bands in Brooklyn, Mexico City, Baltimore and Pittsburgh.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 30, 2026
He played the guitar and mandolin, and she played the violin.
From Slate ● Jan. 26, 2025
He started off on the guitar, then moved onto the mandolin, and is now trying to learn the fiddle, all "just for enjoyment".
From BBC ● Jan. 12, 2025
Through barter and the generosity of a few friends, he soon owned a ragged collection of old stringed instruments—a mandolin, several guitars, an old ukulele, and two banjos.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
The Parton family was musical, and there were always banjos, fiddles, mandolins and guitars around the cabin.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2026
Dulak still draws inspiration from nature, and from making mandolins in the workshop next to his home.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 4, 2023
Meloni said she had no intention of ditching current support for Ukraine, saying the cliched image of Italy being a lightweight nation of "spaghetti and mandolins" had to end.
From Reuters ● Aug. 25, 2022
Three years ago he took up repairing mandolins and guitars in his workshop.
From New York Times ● May 3, 2020
He would let you live in the warehouse for free if you carved pegs or sanded a few mandolins now and again.
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
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.
