GUITAR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does guitar mean? 

• GUITAR (noun)
  The noun GUITAR has 1 sense:

1. a stringed instrument usually having six strings; played by strumming or plucking

  Familiarity information: GUITAR used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• GUITAR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A stringed instrument usually having six strings; played by strumming or plucking

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("guitar" is a kind of...):

stringed instrument (a musical instrument in which taut strings provide the source of sound)

Meronyms (parts of "guitar"):

fingerboard (a narrow strip of wood on the neck of some stringed instruments (violin or cello or guitar etc) where the strings are held against the wood with the fingers)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "guitar"):

acoustic guitar (sound is not amplified by electrical means)

bass guitar (the guitar with six strings that has the lowest pitch)

cither; cithern; citole; cittern; gittern (a 16th century musical instrument resembling a guitar with a pear-shaped soundbox and wire strings)

electric guitar (a guitar whose sound is amplified by electrical means)

Hawaiian guitar; steel guitar (guitar whose steel strings are twanged while being pressed with a movable steel bar for a glissando effect)

uke; ukulele (a small guitar having four strings)

Derivation:

guitarist (a musician who plays the guitar)

 Context examples 

Gravity waves are much like how a guitar string moves when plucked, while acoustic waves are compressions of the air (sound waves).

(Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Likely a Massive Heat Source, NASA)

When she had finished, she gave the guitar to Agatha, who at first declined it.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

“She doesn't sing to the guitar?” said I.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Odds and ends, some pipes, a few novels, two of them in Spanish, an old-fashioned pinfire revolver, and a guitar were among the personal property.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Repetition can be useful if you're trying to memorize a poem, master a guitar riff, or just cultivate good habits.

(Research on repetitive worm behavior has implications for understanding human diseases, National Science Foundation)

He came in gorgeous array, with plumed cap, red cloak, chestnut lovelocks, a guitar, and the boots, of course.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Their outward garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars; interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords, and many other instruments of music, unknown to us in Europe.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Baldly as he had stated it, in his eyes was a rich vision of that hot, starry night at Salina Cruz, the white strip of beach, the lights of the sugar steamers in the harbor, the voices of the drunken sailors in the distance, the jostling stevedores, the flaming passion in the Mexican's face, the glint of the beast-eyes in the starlight, the sting of the steel in his neck, and the rush of blood, the crowd and the cries, the two bodies, his and the Mexican's, locked together, rolling over and over and tearing up the sand, and from away off somewhere the mellow tinkling of a guitar.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

When his children had departed, he took up his guitar and played several mournful but sweet airs, more sweet and mournful than I had ever heard him play before.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

If I tacitly checked this playfulness, and persisted, she would look so scared and disconsolate, as she became more and more bewildered, that the remembrance of her natural gaiety when I first strayed into her path, and of her being my child-wife, would come reproachfully upon me; and I would lay the pencil down, and call for the guitar.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)