mandolin
Americannoun
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:
Rima Fand’s pleasant, folk-tinged score is illustrative rather than striking; the accompanying ensemble of mandolin, string quartet and bass, led from the piano by Mila Henry, plays a lot of ostinatos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 12, 2026
A former child prodigy on the mandolin, Hull opened the evening flexing her Berklee-trained chops in a series of lickety-split bluegrass numbers that got early arrivers whistling with approval.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 17, 2025
He played the guitar and mandolin, and she played the violin.
From Slate ● Jan. 26, 2025
Take “Time on My Hands,” for instance, in which Starr contributes a heartbreaking vocal about the fleeting nature of human experience, or “Come Back,” wherein Ringo contemplates loneliness with fiddle and mandolin accompaniment.
From Salon ● Jan. 10, 2025
The notes of a mandolin drifting like soap bubbles from an illuminated window.
From "The Reader" by Traci Chee
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
The store gradually became as noted for its nighttime hushed-audience gigs as its daytime expertise with guitars, banjos, mandolins and other stringed instruments.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 7, 2020
Three years ago he took up repairing mandolins and guitars in his workshop.
From New York Times ● May 3, 2020
Catonsville, Md., is known as “Music City” for its collection of stores selling guitars, mandolins, woodwinds and other instruments.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 17, 2019
I hear mandolins, guitars, Spanish bagpipes, the drums of Africa, boatmen wailing on the Nile.
From "Angela's Ashes: A Memoir" by Frank McCourt
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.
