dulcimer

1. 1.

   a stringed instrument used in American folk music; an elliptical body and a fretted fingerboard and three strings

   Broaderstringed instrument
2. 2.

   a trapezoidal zither whose metal strings are struck with light hammers

   Broaderzither

Other forms of dulcimer

plural

dulcimers·

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 dulcimer

What does dulcimer mean?

dulcimer means "a stringed instrument used in American folk music; an elliptical body and a fretted fingerboard and three strings". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in dulcimer?

dulcimer has 3 syllables: dul-ci-mer. The stress falls on "dul". In IPA it is /ˈdʌlsɪmɚ/.

Is dulcimer a common word?

dulcimer 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.