Art & MusicGreek → English
Lyre
/ˈlaɪər/noun
An ancient stringed instrument with a yoke and crossbar, plucked or strummed to accompany singing.
The Greek roots
λύρα
lýra
lyre, stringed instrument
Literally: “the lyre”
Follow a root:λύρα3 words
The story of the word
Lýra probably came into Greek from elsewhere, as instrument names tend to. The soundbox was a tortoise shell: the Homeric hymn has the newborn Hermes find a tortoise on his doorstep in the morning and have it strung and playing by the afternoon. Learning to play was standard schooling for an Athenian boy, which is why amousos, unmusical, worked perfectly well as an insult meaning uncivilised.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
lyriclyricallyrebird
In a sentence
The museum has a lyre with the shell still intact.
He plays the lyre in a group that reconstructs ancient music from fragments.