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Plectrum   Listen
noun
Plectrum  n.  (pl. L. plectra, E. plectrums)  A small instrument of ivory, wood, metal, or quill, used in playing upon the lyre and other stringed instruments.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Plectrum" Quotes from Famous Books



... play were the organ, the guitar, the syrinx or panpipe, and the lyre, which she struck not with her fingers, but a plectrum represented beside it. Observe, between the lyre and the banjo her little satchel of music-books, and below the syrinx a lamb and palm. This is the only sign on the monument that could in the least lead to ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... a very primitive kind of lyre that consists of a short but stout piece of bamboo on which two vegetable fibres are tightly drawn. The plectrum used by the player is equally primitive being a fish-bone, a thorn or a bit of wood. The sound caused by grating the two strings is more ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... picture he gives is remarkably like the dulcimers which may be seen and heard outside public-houses to this very day, i.e., a small hollow chest, with the strings stretched across it. An instrument of this kind could be played with the fingers, like a harp, or with a plectrum, like a zither, or with two little knob-sticks, like the dulcimer. Mersennus (b. 1588) also identifies the Psaltery with ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor

... how they looked, for pictures of them, or at least of similar instruments, are found on Egyptian and Babylonian monuments. The harp was probably like a large guitar, only it was played like a mandolin, with a plectrum. The psaltery or lute was a larger-sized harp. The cornet or trumpet was simply a curved ram's horn blown with the lips like our cornets; there was also another form made out of brass, long and straight. The Hebrews also used a wind instrument like our flute, a pipe with holes on the side ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... fares harping on his hollow harp to rocky Pytho, clad in his fragrant raiment that waxes not old, and beneath the golden plectrum winsomely sounds his lyre. Thence from earth to Olympus, fleet as thought, he goes to the House of Zeus, into the Consistory of the other Gods, and anon the Immortals bethink them of harp and minstrelsy. And all the Muses together with ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... dark-grained citrean wood, inlaid with ivory and silver, were several rolls of parchment and papyrus, the books of the day, some of them splendidly emblazoned and illuminated; a lyre of tortoiseshell, and near to it the slender plectrum by which its cords were wakened to melody. Two or three little flasks of agate and of onyx containing some choice perfumes, a Tuscan vase full of fresh-gathered flowers, and several articles yet more decidedly feminine, were scattered on the board; needles, and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... guitar, has four keys and is played with a plectrum, and the Kermanche, Cynthour, Tchogor, the Tchaminioho—the latter, a circular instrument covered by a skin, with one metal and two gut strings, on a long metal stand, is played with a bow;—the dumbuk (drum), with only one skin pasted round its single ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... trahit The sleeping mans nett draweth. ijsdem e literis efficitur Tragedia et Comedia. Tragedies and Comedies are made of one Alphabett. Good wyne needes no bush. Heroum filij noxae. The sonnes of demy goddes demy men. Alia res sceptrum alia plectrum fere danides.[20] Abore dejecta quivis ligna colligit. The hasty bytch whelpes a blind lytter. Priscis credendum. We must beleeue the wytnesses are dead. Thear is no trusting a woman nor ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... the strings, and twice She faltered in her task; then tenderly, As for an old sad tale of hopeless years, With drooping head and fingers deft she poured Her soul forth into melodies. Now slow The plectrum led to prayer the cloistered chords, Now loudly with the crash of falling rain, Now soft as the leaf whispering of words, Now loud and soft together as the long Patter of pearls and seed-pearls on a dish Of marble; liquid now as from the bush Warbles the mango bird; meandering Now as the streamlet ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng

... present it without danger of just or rational offense. For evidence of this truth we need look no further than the pastorals of Virgil and Theocritus. But under the dirty clumsy paws of a harper whose plectrum is a muck-rake any tune will become a chaos of discords, though the motive of the tune should be the first principle of nature—the passion of man for woman or the passion of woman for man. And the unhealthily demonstrative and obtrusive animalism of the Whitmaniad is as unnatural, as ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler



Words linked to "Plectrum" :   device, plectron, pick, guitar pick



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