steel guitar

Noun

steel guitar (countable and uncountable, plural steel guitars)

1. (uncountable) A method of playing slide guitar using a steel (a kind of slide).
   • Steel guitar — in which the player used a metal or glass slide to note the strings — became popular when Hawaiian musicians, such as master steel guitarist Sal Hoopi, toured and recorded in the 1910a and 1920s.2005, W. K. McNeil, Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music, page 167
2. (countable) Any of several types of guitar designed to be played using this method.
   • While the acoustic guitar is stereotypically tied to country music, the pedal steel guitar, perhaps even more so than the acoustic guitar, represents country music by virtue of its visual appearance and more importantly its sound. […] During the 1950s and the era of the Nashville Sound, artists...2003, Victor Coelho, The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar, pages 138–139
   • The sound of the steel guitar had become popular in country music in the 1940s and was especially noticeable in the fusion of country and big band jazz called western swing.2004, A. J. Millard, The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon, page 53