Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A small thin piece of metal, plastic, bone, or similar material, used to pluck the strings of certain instruments, such as the guitar or lute.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A small instrument of ivory, horn, or metal used for plucking or twanging the strings of a lyre, cithara, or other similar instrument.
- noun Something like or likened to a plectrum.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A small instrument of ivory, wood, metal, or quill, used in playing upon the lyre and other stringed instruments.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun anatomy, zoology An
anatomical part resembling a plectrum in shape. - noun music A small piece of plastic, metal, ivory, etc for
plucking thestrings of aguitar ,lyre ,mandolin , etc.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a small thin device (of metal or plastic or ivory) used to pluck a stringed instrument
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 plectrum.
Examples
-
The ants have two segments of their abdomen, that's the last section of their bodies, that they rub together and one of these sections has a whole series of grooves on them and the other half has something that we call the plectrum, that is a bit like the plectrum of a guitar except it itself has several grooves, and when they rub these two surfaces together it produces sort of chirruping type noises.
unknown title 2009
-
Imagine your plectrum is a "ping-pong ball" (drom the first) and it just goes up and down - without changing speed!
-
Another interesting feature on offer is a plectrum, which is an extra input device besides the alphanumeric keypad and pen stylus.
The Economic Times 2009
-
Remember that triangular thing called a plectrum that's supposed to be one of a user's choices for ways of input on the
Unwired View 2008
-
Remember that triangular thing called a plectrum that's supposed to be one of a user's choices for ways of input on the
Unwired View 2008
-
Remember that triangular thing called a plectrum that's supposed to be one of a user's choices for ways of input on the
Unwired View 2008
-
- Remember that triangular thing called a plectrum that's supposed to be one of a user's choices for ways of input on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic?
-
Remember that triangular thing called a plectrum that's supposed to be one of a user's choices for ways of input on the
Unwired View 2008
-
Remember that triangular thing called a plectrum that's supposed to be one of a user's choices for ways of input on the
Unwired View 2008
-
Tlie plior - niinx, or large lyre, dedicated to Apollo, and plaj-ed upon with an ivory instrument, called plectrum, seems, from certain very intricate and minute parts always recurring in its repre - sentations, to have been a very complicated structure.
Costume of the ancients Hope, Thomas, 1770?-1831 1812
jaime_d commented on the word plectrum
from Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
July 19, 2009