Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An ancient instrument resembling the lyre.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An ancient Greek musical instrument of the lyre class. See lyre.
  • noun [capitalized] In zoology, a genus of prosobranchiate gastropodous mollusks.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Mus.) An ancient stringed musical instrument resembling the harp.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun music An ancient Greek stringed instrument, which could be considered a forerunner of the guitar.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin, from Greek kitharā.]

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Examples

  • The later form was the so-called cithara, the most common shape of which is that made familiar to all by the pedal piece of the square pianoforte.

    A Popular History of the Art of Music From the Earliest Times Until the Present 1874

  • About the twelfth hour she perceived, in the depths of the sycamore trees, a blind old man with one hand resting on the shoulder of a child who walked before him, while with the other he carried a kind of cithara of black wood against his hip.

    Salammbo 2003

  • The Greeks believed that the cithara had come into Greece as a three-stringed lyre in the ninth century and that it had been developed in Greece itself.

    Archive 2010-08-01 2010

  • The Greeks believed that the cithara had come into Greece as a three-stringed lyre in the ninth century and that it had been developed in Greece itself.

    The kithara 2010

  • Down in the courtyard Adalana played the cithara and Tasatyala tapped on the fingerdrums.

    Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009

  • Aghazal played the cithara and sang all the lovely longing thoughts Akantha dared not speak aloud, and Adalana, with her flute, was an impertinent skylark who served as a go-between.

    Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009

  • Down in the courtyard Adalana played the cithara and Tasatyala tapped on the fingerdrums.

    Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009

  • Second would dance, and Third would play the cithara and sing.

    Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009

  • Aghazal played the cithara and sang all the lovely longing thoughts Akantha dared not speak aloud, and Adalana, with her flute, was an impertinent skylark who served as a go-between.

    Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009

  • Second would dance, and Third would play the cithara and sing.

    Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009

Comments

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  • An ancient Greek stringed instrument, possibly a forerunner of the guitar. Also spelled kithara.

    March 17, 2008