Word.ws English Dictionary

citterns

citterns is the plural of cittern.

Meaning of cittern

Noun

cittern (plural citterns)

  1. A stringed instrument (chordophone), played with a plectrum (a pick), and most commonly possessing four wire strings and chromatic frets, which is a precursor to the modern day guitar.
    • This discourse took us much time, till it was time to go to bed; but we being merry, we bade my Lady goodnight, and intended to have gone to the Post-house to drink, and hear a pretty girl play of the cittern (and indeed we should have lain there, but by a mistake we did not), but it was late, and...1661 January 17, Samuel Pepys, Diary of Samuel Pepys: January 1661

Questions about citterns

What is citterns the plural of?
Citterns is the plural of cittern.

Words near citterns in the dictionary

  1. cittern-heads
  2. citternhead
  3. citternheads
  4. citternist
  5. citternists
  6. citterns
  7. cittess
  8. cittesses
  9. cittie
  10. citties
  11. cittizen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: citterns (page history and authors); cittern (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “citterns.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/citterns. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.