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:
Led by Busby’s machine-gun mandolin riffs and hair-raising tenor, the band had a hard-edged bluegrass-style sound that was a far cry from the homogenized, syrupy country-and-western slop heard around town.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026
In its rules, the academy states that traditional country recordings, among other things, employ “traditional country instrumentation such as acoustic guitar, steel guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, piano, electric guitar and live drums.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 2, 2025
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
Perhaps he had sung when that other barber played the mandolin.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
Dulak still draws inspiration from nature, and from making mandolins in the workshop next to his home.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 4, 2023
M. M. Keeravani, the song’s composer, used duffs, an Indian skin drum, for the main beats, adding in mandolins for the melody.
From New York Times ● Mar. 12, 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
That was his inspiration for using a brassy WWII-era ensemble, but throwing into it everything from banjos and mandolins to bass saxophone — a big band for the Big Bang.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 27, 2022
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
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