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dulcimer
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
dulcimer
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A modern dulcimer is more like the lower one in the photograph, with a double first string.
▪ And he had no idea what a dulcimer sounded like anyway.
▪ Anderson shares the bill with Justina & Joyce, famed for their lush vocal harmonies accompanied by guitar and lap dulcimer.
▪ Coleridge's inability to explain the dome leads him to try and carry the damsel with a dulcimer.
▪ One of the KLEZmer special instruments was the hammered dulcimer, known as a TSIMbal.
▪ Soundposts are an important feature of bowed instruments but are unsuitable for plucked instruments and will deaden the sound of a dulcimer.
▪ The solo dulcimer player, Eugene Gladkov, is clearly a virtuoso of the first order.
▪ The thickness would suit a guitar but are unnecessarily heavy for a dulcimer less than half its width.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dulcimer

Dulcimer \Dul"ci*mer\, n. [It. dolcemele,r Sp. dulcemele, fr. L. dulcis sweet + melos song, melody, Gr. ?; cf. OF. doulcemele. See Dulcet, and Melody.] (Mus.)

  1. An instrument, having stretched metallic wires which are beaten with two light hammers held in the hands of the performer.

  2. An ancient musical instrument in use among the Jews.
    --Dan. iii. 5. It is supposed to be the same with the psaltery.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
dulcimer

late 15c., from Middle French doulce mer, variant of doulcemele, perhaps from doulz de mer, said to represent Latin dulce "sweet" + melos "song," from Greek melos "melody."

Wiktionary
dulcimer

n. (context musical instruments English) A stringed instrument, with strings stretched across a sounding board, usually trapezoidal. It's played on the lap or horizontally on a table. Some have their own legs. These musical instruments are played by plucking on the strings (traditionally with a quill) or by tapping on them (in the case of the hammer dulcimers).

Related phrases:
WordNet
dulcimer

  1. n. a stringed instrument used in American folk music; an elliptical body and a fretted fingerboard and three strings

  2. a trapezoidal zither whose metal strings are struck with light hammers

Wikipedia
Dulcimer

A dulcimer is a type of musical string instrument. It is a species of zither. Among its forms are:

  • Hammered dulcimer, free-standing, most frequently but not always trapezoidal in shape, with many strings struck by handheld "hammers". This type of instrument is found many cultures. Most countries have their own name for the instrument, and many have different tuning systems.
  • Fretted, three or four strings, generally played on the lap by strumming; including
    • Appalachian dulcimer, a folk instrument used in the Appalachian region of U.S.A.
    • Banjo dulcimer, with banjo-like resonating membrane
    • Resonator dulcimer, with inset conical resonator
  • Other
    • Bowed dulcimer, teardrop-shaped and played upright with a bow
    • Electric dulcimer, various types of dulcimer which use a pickup to amplify the sound

The name, though perhaps not the design and sound, of the instrument is familiar to English-speaking readers from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem (published 1816) Kubla Khan:

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "dulcimer".

There, no doubt, they tread on rugs from Teheran and are diverted by the bulbul and play upon the dulcimer and feed upon sweetmeats.

But the cimbalom was no meek and modest dulcimer, to be overwhelmed by the rest of the band.

One red-dressed woman had a dulcimer slung on her back, and Kelder brightened at this sighta minstrel, surely, the first he had ever seen.

Mikel faltered in his playing, the felt-tipped hammers striking any whichway on the dulcimer strings.

She lifted a little silver hammer and bonked her dulcimer a triple bonk of do-sol-do.

Stan in his office and we sat amid the plummy brocades of a room in the Dulcimer House hotel, booked in the name of Petros Corporation.

Some led small children by the hand, others followed with musical instruments: citharas, tabrets, timbrels, harps, dulcimers and cymbals.

There were many other rooms, all filled with lords and ladies, all with entertainers: three different gleemen in their cloaks, more jugglers and tumblers, and musicians playing flutes, bitterns, dulcimers, and lutes, plus five different sizes of fiddle, six kinds of horn, straight or curved or curled, and ten sizes of drum from tambour to kettle.

We are not angels, which have their dulcimers ever on the choral pitch.

But since what we're likely to get in the Anfract is a cartload of trouble, and that's about all, so far as I'm concerned Dulcimer can have fifteen percent of my share of that any time he likes.

Dulcimer agreed, but only if his share of whatever was recovered from the Anfract was increased to twelve percent.

Everybody plays something: the guitar, the banjo, the autoharp, the spoons, the dulcimer -- or the dulcimore, as they call it.

The three musicians had an amazing array of instruments, from archaic strung guitars and similar items she couldn't name, to electric and fiber-optic versions of the same, synths, glockenspiels, marimbas, electronic and acoustic drums and ethnic percussion and a dizzying collection of other gear including a hammer dulcimer.

Eric walked past a small covey of actors carrying their props, ungainly stuffed hobbyhorses embroidered in bright colors, then he saw Judy, struggling to carry her large hammer dulcimer.

Nona had won him with her special playing of her hammer dulcimer, before, and he had been loyal to her since.