Art & MusicGreek → English
Cymbal
/ˈsɪmbəl/noun
A round brass plate struck or clashed to produce a ringing crash.
The Greek roots
κύμβαλον
kýmbalon
cymbal
κύμβη
kýmbē
cup, hollow vessel
Literally: “little cup”
The story of the word
The Greek instrument was a pair of small bronze cups, nearer to finger cymbals than to a drummer's ride, and it belonged to the ecstatic rites of Cybele and Dionysus rather than to any concert. Old English borrowed cimbal from Latin, and Norman French later supplied the spelling we use. Paul's sounding brass and tinkling cymbal in First Corinthians is κύμβαλον in the Greek. Chime descends from the same word.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
chimecimbalom
In a sentence
One cymbal crash at the end of the verse, and nothing else from the drummer.