lyre

Noun
US[lahyr]/laɪr/1 syllable

Open English WordNet

Noun (1)

  1. a harp used by ancient Greeks for accompanimentType of harpKinds trigon
Word of the day · Oct 6About this word
spuriousadjective

What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz

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Webster's Dictionary (1913)

Lyre noun

Origin: OE. lire, OF. lyre, L. lyra, Gr. …. Cf. Lyra.

1. Music A stringed instrument of music; a kind of harp much used by the ancients, as an accompaniment to poetry.

☞ The lyre was the peculiar instrument of Apollo, the tutelary god of music and poetry. It gave name to the species of verse called lyric, to which it originally furnished an accompaniment.

2. Astronomy One of the constellations; Lyra. See Lyra.

Lyre bat Zoology, a small bat (Megaderma lyra), inhabiting India and Ceylon. It is remarkable for the enormous size and curious shape of the nose membrane and ears. — Lyre turtle Zoology, the leatherback.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54

The Devil's Dictionary

LYRE, n. An ancient instrument of torture. The word is now used in a figurative sense to denote the poetic faculty, as in the following fiery lines of our great poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

I sit astride Parnassus with my lyre, And pick with care the disobedient wire. That stupid shepherd lolling on his crook With deaf attention scarcely deigns to look. I bide my time, and it shall come at length, When, with a Titan's energy and strength, I'll grab a fistful of the strings, and O, The word shall suffer when I let them go! Farquharson Harris

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