Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A Japanese stringed instrument usually having 13 silk strings stretched over a long, hollow, wooden body.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A Japanese musical instrument, consisting of a long box over which are stretched thirteen strings of silk, each five feet in length and provided with a separate bridge. It is played with both hands, like the harp. The tuning is effected by shifting the position of the bridge, and semitones are obtained by pressing the string behind the bridge.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun music a
Japanese stringed instrument having numerousstrings , usually seven or thirteen, that are stretched over aconvex wooden sounding board and areplucked with threeplectra , worn on thethumb ,index finger , andmiddle finger of one hand.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun Japanese stringed instrument that resembles a zither; has a rectangular wooden sounding board and usually 13 silk strings that are plucked with the fingers
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word koto.
Examples
-
Young men who are unskilled in koto or fué [harp or flute] amuse themselves with tonearasoi 1 and imayo, 2 and at such a time this is entertaining.
Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan b. 974? Murasaki Shikibu Izumi Shikibu 1920
-
2 A koto is called a horizontal harp, but it consists of a number of strings stretched the length of the instrument, the scale made by an arrangement of bridges placed under the strings, and played upon by four ivory keys worn on the four fingers of the right hand.
Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan b. 974? Murasaki Shikibu Izumi Shikibu 1920
-
The koto is a large thirteen-stringed lute that rests on the floor when played.
Geisha, A Life Mineko Iwasaki with Rande Brown 2002
-
The koto is a large thirteen-stringed lute that rests on the floor when played.
Geisha, A Life Mineko Iwasaki with Rande Brown 2002
-
They were obtained by playing a stringed instrument called koto, by standing at a cross-street and watching the passers, by manipulating stones, and by counting footsteps.
A History of the Japanese People From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era Dairoku Kikuchi 1886
-
It is called the koto-ita, and is one of the most primitive of musical instruments; the little sticks are used to strike it.
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan First Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877
-
Yamazaki also brought a miniature version of the traditional Japanese harp, known as a koto, to the station to play an ensemble with her countryman Soichi Noguchi, who has carried his Japanese flute to the station.
-
Yamazaki also brought a miniature version of the traditional Japanese harp, known as a koto, to the station to play an ensemble with her countryman Soichi Noguchi, who has carried his Japanese flute to the station.
Taipei Times 2010
-
Short Synopsis: Natsume gets visited (read: possessed) by a youkai who used to play a traditional Japanese instrument called the "koto".
Anime Nano! 2008
-
(I was recently asked off-site if my name has a meaning and so, to provide some useless trivia, although the hiragana "ことみ" has no meaning per se, my name is derived from the kanji "koto" (異) and "mi" (美) and can be translated as "uncommon beauty".
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.