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guitar

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ɡɪˈtɑː//
  • United States//ɡɪˈtɑɹ//
  • //ˈɡɪt.ɑɹ//

A stringed musical instrument, of European origin, usually with a fretted fingerboard and six strings, played with the fingers or a plectrum (guitar pick).

noun

  1. 1

    A stringed musical instrument, of European origin, usually with a fretted fingerboard and six strings, played with the fingers or a plectrum (guitar pick).

    Learning to strum the guitar rhythmically is essential.

    She was carrying her guitar in a fancily-decorated case.

    The band is looking for a new guitar player.

  2. 2

    Any type of musical instrument of the lute family, characterized by a flat back, along with a neck whose upper surface is in the same plane as the soundboard, with strings along the neck and parallel to the soundboard.

Etymology

Etymology tree Pre-Greekder. Ancient Greek κῐθᾰ́ρᾱ (kĭthắrā)bor. Aramaic קיתרא (qīṯārā)bor. Arabic قِيثَارَة (qīṯāra)bor. Old Spanish guitarra Spanish guitarrabor. English guitar From Spanish guitarra, from Arabic قِيثَارَة (qīṯāra), from Ancient Greek κῐθᾰ́ρᾱ (kĭthắrā). Doublet of cithara, cither, and zither.

verb

  1. 1

    informalTo play the guitar.

    We guitared and drummed and head banged and pianoed.

Forms

plural
guitars
past tense
guitared
past participle
guitared
present participle
guitaring
third person singular
guitars
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).