lute

lute

¹

an ancient plucked stringed instrument, consisting of a long fingerboard with frets and gut strings, and a body shaped like a sliced pear

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lute

²

Dentistry a thin layer of cement used to fix a crown or inlay in place on a tooth

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

lute

[lüt]

(materials)

A substance, such as cement or clay, for packing a joint or coating a porous surface to produce imperviousness to gas or liquid.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

lute

1. A scraper having a straight cutting edge; used to level plastic concrete.

2. A bricklayer’s straightedge used for striking off clay from a brick mold.

3.See sulfur cement.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Lute

 

a plucked stringed instrument.

The lute has an oval, convex body, short and wide neck with a pegbox bent back at an angle, and from six to 16 strings (sometimes as many as 24). The upper sounding board is flat and has a large sound hole. The tuning of the strings is based on a system of different sequences of intervals of a fourth and third (depending on the piece being performed).

The lute originated from the Arab-Iranian al’ud (earliest information about which dates from the third to the seventh century), which was introduced in Spain and Sicily at the end of the Middle Ages. From Spain and Sicily a somewhat modified instrument, called a lute, spread to Western European countries, and later to Eastern Europe. The art of lute-playing reached its height in the 16th and 17th centuries. By the middle of the 18th century, the lute had been supplanted by the guitar.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.