What is "citole"

Citole \Cit"ole\, n. [OF. citole, fr. L. cithara. See Cittern.] (Mus.) A musical instrument; a kind of dulcimer. [Obs.]

n. An archaic musical instrument whose exact form is uncertain, generally shown with four strings.

n. a 16th century musical instrument resembling a guitar with a pear-shaped soundbox and wire strings [syn: cittern, cithern, cither, gittern]

Citole, also spelled Sytole, Cytiole, Gytolle, etc. (probably a French diminutive form of cithara, and not from Latin cista, a box), an archaic musical instrument, similar and a distant ancestor of the modern guitar of which the exact form is uncertain. It is generally shown as a four-string instrument, with a body generally referred to as "holly-leaf" shaped.

The citole is frequently mentioned by poets of the 13th to the 15th centuries, and is found in Wycliffe's Bible (1360) in 2 Samuel vi. 5: "Harpis and sitols and tympane". The Authorized Version has psaltiries, and the Vulgate lyrae. It has been supposed to be another name for the psaltery, a box-shaped instrument often seen in the illuminated missals of the Middle Ages, and is also liable to confusion with the gittern; whether the terms overlapped in medieval usage has been the subject of modern controversy.