Word.ws English Dictionary

glass harp

/ɡlɑːs hɑːp/US/ɡlæs hɑɹp/

glass harp noun: a musical instrument consisting of glasses (typically wine glasses) tuned by putting different amounts of liquid into them. Sound is produced by rubbing one's fingers around the rims of the glasses, causing them to vibrate.

glass harp: a musical instrument consisting of glasses (typically wine glasses) tuned by putting different...
Image: Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

glass harp (plural glass harps)

  1. A musical instrument consisting of glasses (typically wine glasses) tuned by putting different amounts of liquid into them. Sound is produced by rubbing one's fingers around the rims of the glasses, causing them to vibrate.
    • A newer glass instrument is the glass harp [G[erman] Glasharfe] constructed by B[runo] Hoffmann in 1929. Similar to the musical glasses of England, it consists of 46 individually tuned glasses fixed on a resonant table.1969, “Glass harmonica”, in Willi Apel, editor, Harvard Dictionary of Music, 2nd rev. and enl. edition, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 347
    • Glass harmonicas are basically of two types. One type employs vertical wine glasses arranged so that the performer can rub more than one glass at a time. A collection of glasses played in this manner is sometimes called a glass harp. The other type, called the armonica by its inventor Benjamin...2000, Thomas D. Rossing, “Glass Musical Instruments”, in Science of Percussion Instruments (Series in Popular Science; 3), Singapore: World Scientific, →ISBN, page 182

Examples of glass harp in a sentence

  • A collection of glasses played in this manner is sometimes called a glass harp.2000, Thomas D. Rossing, “Glass Musical Instruments”, in Science of Percussion Instruments (Series in Popular Science; 3), Singapore: World...
  • The glass harp produces the "sound of the universe" according to [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe.2007, C. Barry Carter, M. Grant Norton, “Processing Glass and Glass-ceramics”, in Ceramic Materials: Science and Engineering, Springer...

Synonyms of glass harp

Forms of glass harp

pluralglass harps

Origin of glass harp

Possibly a calque of German Glasharfe, from Glas (“glass”) + Harfe (“harp”) (see the 1969 quotation).

Questions about glass harp

What does glass harp mean?
Glass harp means a musical instrument consisting of glasses (typically wine glasses) tuned by putting different amounts of liquid into them. Sound is produced by rubbing one's fingers around the rims of the glasses, causing them to vibrate.
How do you use glass harp in a sentence?
A collection of glasses played in this manner is sometimes called a glass harp.
What part of speech is glass harp?
Glass harp is a noun.
How do you pronounce glass harp?
Glass harp is pronounced /ɡlɑːs hɑːp/ (UK).
What is the plural of glass harp?
The plural of glass harp is glass harps.

Words near glass harp in the dictionary

  1. glass gardens
  2. glass harmonica
  3. glass harmonicas
  4. glass harmonicist
  5. glass harmonicists
  6. glass harp
  7. glass harpist
  8. glass harpists
  9. glass harps
  10. glass jaw
  11. glass jaws

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: glass harp (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-glass harp.ogg, en-au-glass harp.ogg.

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