cither

1. 1.

   a musical stringed instrument with strings stretched over a flat sounding board; it is laid flat and played with a plectrum and with fingers

   Synonymszitherzithern

   Broaderstringed instrument

   Narrowerdulcimer
2. 2.

   a 16th century musical instrument resembling a guitar with a pear-shaped soundbox and wire strings

   Synonymscitterncitherncitolegittern

   Broaderguitar

Other forms of cither

plural

cithers·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about cither

What does cither mean?

cither means "a musical stringed instrument with strings stretched over a flat sounding board; it is laid flat and played with a plectrum and with fingers". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in cither?

cither has 2 syllables: ci-ther. The stress falls on "ci".

What is another word for cither?

Close synonyms include zither, zithern, cittern, cithern, citole. 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 cither a common word?

cither is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.