| 释义 |
‖ cithara|ˈsɪθərə|
[L. cithara, a. Gr. κιθάρα.
Musical instruments are subject to great alteration of structure and shape, in process of time, and in different countries. Some of the resulting types become peculiar to one country, some to another. Consequently, cognate names, regularly descended from the same original, come at length to be applied by different nations to very different types of the instrument. Sometimes, also, one or more derivative types, distinguished by diminutive or augmentative names, are used in the same country. When, as often happens, any of these national or local forms of the instrument become subsequently known and introduced in another country, they usually take their local name with them. Hence, the modern languages often use two or three modifications of the same original word applied to as many instruments which different peoples have developed out of the original type. Thus cither, cithern or cittern, citole, gittern, guitar, zither, are all found in English as names of extant or obsolete instruments developed from the cithara.]
An ancient musical instrument of triangular shape with from seven to eleven strings, not unlike the lyre or phorminx.
a1789Burney Hist. Mus. (ed. 2) I. ix. 157 The recitation of tragedy among the Greeks..accompanied by the Cithara. 1834Lytton Pompeii i. i, While yet the cithara sounds. |