American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A percussion instrument consisting of a small drumhead with jingling disks fitted into the rim, usually played by shaking and striking with the hand.
- n. A similar instrument without a drumhead.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A parchment-covered racket, resembling a battledore, with which the ball is thrown in the game of tamburello (which see).
- n. A small drum formed of a ring or hoop of wood or sometimes of metal, over which is stretched a single head of parchment. The hoop carries several pairs of loose metal disks called
jingles. The instrument is played either by shaking, or by striking with the hand or arm, or by drawing the finger across the head (or each in alternation). It is of Oriental origin, and is very common in Spain, whence it is often called tambour de Basque. See cut in next column.
- n. A long narrow drum or tabor used in Provence; also, a bottle-shaped drum used in Egypt.
- n. A Provençal dance originally executed to the sound of tabor and pipe, with or without singing.
- n. Music for such a dance, in duple rhythm and quick tempo, and usually accompanied by a drone bass of a single tone, as the tonic or the dominant, as if played by rubbing the finger across a tambourine.
- n. A remarkable pigeon of Africa, Tympanistria bicolor. See cut under Tympanistria.
- n. A percussion instrument consisting of a small, usually wooden, hoop closed on one side with a drum frame and featuring jingling metal disks on the tread; it is usually held in the hand and shaken rhythmically.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A small drum, especially a shallow drum with only one skin, played on with the hand, and having bells at the sides; a timbrel.
- n. A South American wild dove (Tympanistria tympanistria), mostly white, with black-tiped wings and tail. Its resonant note is said to be ventriloquous.
- n. a shallow drum with a single drumhead and with metallic disks in the sides
- from French tambourin (lit., "little drum"), from tambour ("drum"). (Wiktionary)
- French tambourin, small drum, from Old French; see tambourin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
“In the hands of a Jewish woman, the tambourine is a symbol of passage, hope, and achievement.”
“ She doesn't look anything like Louise, who is lean and black haired, but the tambourine is a lot like the one I held in New Orleans last spring when we went to Mardi Gras and sang dive-bar karaoke.”
“He tells me that the tambourine is the sole feminine instrument of the Middle East.”
“One of the other musicians said that the tambourine is a female due to the fact that it makes a pretty jingle and is designed to be spanked.”
“Tests of strength and endurance occur between the men of the tribe; and visits are paid to the various settlements, during the long winter nights; and songs and choruses are sung, accompanied by a kind of tambourine which is made from the bladder of a walrus or seal, and stretched across the antlers of a reindeer.”
“The owner of a tambourine is the equal of a peer; the proprietor of a guitar is the captain of his hundred.”
“One of the young soldiers had a kind of tambourine—the soldiers sang songs around their own campfire.”
“Says the smooth hypocrite: "I should have set thee on thy way with joyful festivities (Hebrew:" joy ") and songs, with timbrel (toph, a kind of tambourine) and harp" (kinnor, perhaps originally an instrument more like a violin).”
“The Alaskan Indians stretch a skin into a kind of tambourine and beat it with a club to call a bull; which sound, however, might not be unlike one of the many peculiar bellows that I have heard from cow moose in the wilderness.”
“Then some thick-lipped musicians struck up music on quaintly-shaped stringed instruments, and the strange old man, bearing a kind of tambourine in his hand, came round to collect coins, the collection being repeated at the conclusion of each legend.”
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