castanets

Questions about castanets

What does castanets mean?

castanets means "(used in the plural) a percussion instrument consisting of a pair of hollow pieces of wood or bone (usually held between the thumb and fingers) that are made to click together (as by Spanish dancers) in rhythm with the dance".

How many syllables are in castanets?

castanets has 3 syllables and divides as ca-sta-nets under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for castanets?

Close synonyms include bones, clappers, finger cymbals. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is castanets a common word?

castanets is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.