tambourine
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of tambourine
1570–80; earlier tamboryne < Middle Dutch tamborijn small drum < Middle French tambourin or Medieval Latin tamborīnum. See tambour, -ine 1
Explanation
The tambourine is a portable percussion instrument that you shake or strike against your leg or palm. If you want to be in a band with your friends but you don't know how to play an instrument, you could try playing the tambourine. Tambourines are round and look like shallow drums (sometimes with an actual drumhead) with several pairs of metal disks that jingle against each other when you shake or tap the tambourine. The earliest meaning of tambourine was "small drum," from the diminutive of the French tambour, "drum."
Vocabulary lists containing tambourine
Musical Instruments - Introductory
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Musical Instruments - Middle School
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Musical Instruments - High School
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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:
In Portland, a woman was charged with assault via tambourine.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 1, 2025
Kostelnik took his place with the band, and got paid for playing the tambourine for the hourlong set.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2025
While Kat says he can’t buy a guitar every time he messes up, he jokes and tells her he can buy her drums, a tambourine and other band instruments.
From Salon ● Apr. 8, 2024
In another classroom, steel pans, a keyboard and tambourine are laid out near some comfy beanbags, as therapist Margaret Moore takes a relaxed class for teenagers.
From BBC ● Jan. 30, 2024
Fern went flying through the house in search of Ma Charles’s tambourine.
From "Gone Crazy in Alabama" by Rita Williams-Garcia
Moroccans took to the streets to celebrate and local media have shown videos of happy fans driving through Tangier waving the national flag, banging tambourines and honking their horns.
From BBC ● Mar. 18, 2026
Six school employees converge in the elementary school music room, where tambourines and xylophones hang from the wall.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 5, 2023
The lead single of the same name — and the band’s first new offering since the 2017 album “After Laughter” — is a funky tapestry frilled with tambourines and angular dashes of guitar.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2022
“I had many iterations and inventions of like creating my own drum kits out of cardboard boxes and tambourines, just fooling around and then making loops,” she said.
From New York Times ● Sep. 21, 2022
I kept track of who would give the sermon each night, and I made sure the worshipers had tambourines and drums.
From "Lost Boy, Lost Girl" by John Bul Dau
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.
