plectra

Implements less developed belong to a separate order of sound-producing contrivances, namely plectra, and may be described as permitting strumming by striking in place of twanging or twitching the strings.

The Violin Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators George Hart

I now discover that my account type doesn't allow me to set up a poll on plectrums vs plectra, but I'm sure you lot will leave comments if you have a strong view on the subject.

grahamsleight's Journal 2005

It is made of seven or eight hard-wood slats, pinned with bamboo tacks to transverse banana trunks lying on the ground: like the grande caisse, it is played upon with sticks, plectra like tent-pegs.

Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo 2003

She peered inside the instrument, baffled by its complexity of strings and plectra.

Dwellers in the Crucible Margaret Wander Bonanno 1990

The Terran glimpsed fingernails reinforced with sharp steel plectra.

Agent Of The Terran Empire Anderson, Poul, 1926- 1965

Both in Spain and southern France accompanying instruments struck with plectra or twanged with the fingers were adopted at a very early period, and the people of those parts attained to a high state of proficiency -- so much so indeed as to have rendered the cultivation of this description of music a national characteristic with them in the use of such instruments.

The Violin Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators George Hart

Ismaraque et quondam genialis litora Naxi. tunc caras iniere fores comitique canoro225 hic chelyn, hic flauam maculoso nebrida tergo, hic thyrsos, hic plectra ferunt; hic enthea lauro tempora, Minoa crinem premit ille corona.

The Marriage of Stella and Violentilla 1912

"Santír:" Lane (M.E., chapt. xviii.) describes it as resembling the Kanún (dulcimer or zither) but with two oblique peg-pieces instead of one and double chords of wire (not treble strings of lamb's gut) and played upon with two sticks instead of the little plectra.

Arabian nights. English Anonymous 1855

[FN#317] i.e. spare pegs and strings, plectra, thumb-guards, etc.

Arabian nights. English Anonymous 1855

_Aristotle_ predicted, long ago, that “when the shuttle would move of itself, and plectra of themselves strike the lyre, we should need no more slaves.”

System der volkswirthschaft. English Wilhelm Roscher 1855