gittern

See also: Gittern

English

Etymology

From Old French guiterne, ultimately from Latin cithara. Doublet of cittern.

Noun

gittern (plural gitterns)

1. A small, quill-plucked, gut-strung musical instrument, most commonly with three to four strings in doubles courses; it is a flat-backed predecessor of the guitar, and it originated around the 13th century, coming to Europe via Moorish Spain.

   Synonym: quintern

   • 1820, John Keats, “Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil. A Story from Boccaccio.”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: […] [Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC, stanza XIX, page 58:

     Now they can no more hear thy ghittern’s tune, / For venturing syllables that ill beseem / The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme.

Alternative forms

• ghittern

See also

• Appendix:Glossary of chordophones

Verb

gittern (third-person singular simple present gitterns, present participle gitterning, simple past and past participle gitterned)

1. To play on the gittern.
   • c. 1639-1640. John Milton, The Cambridge Manuscript; Excerpts from pages 35-41, as Reprinted in David Masson, editor & author, The Life of John Milton: Narrated in Connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time; Volume II, London and New York.: MacMillan and Co, 1871, page 109.

     [...] [E]ach evening every one with mistress, or Ganymede, glitterning along the streets, or solacing on the banks of Jordan, or down the stream.

Related terms

• cither, cittern, zittern

Anagrams

• gritten, retting