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tambourine |
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tambourine (tăm'bərēn`), musical instrument of the percussion family, having a narrow circular frame and a single parchment drumhead, with metal plates or jingles set in the frame. The ancient Romans used it, and in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance it was used by traveling musicians and entertainers. In the 19th cent. it became a military-band instrument, appearing later and very occasionally in the orchestra. The timbrel or tabret of the Bible was probably similar to the tambourine. tambourineSmall frame drum with one skin nailed or glued to a shallow circular frame, into which jingles or pellet bells are set. It is held with one hand and struck with the other, or simply shaken. Tambourines were played in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, especially in religious contexts, and they have long been prominent in Middle Eastern folk and religious use. Crusaders took them to Europe in the 13th century. tambourine Music a percussion instrument consisting of a single drumhead of skin stretched over a circular wooden frame hung with pairs of metal discs that jingle when it is struck or shaken How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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And, seating herself, she gracefully presented her tambourine to the goat. Lest the reader should be at any loss to discover the cause of Miss Miggs's deep emotion, it may be whispered apart that, happening to be listening, as her custom sometimes was, when Gabriel and his wife conversed together, she had heard the locksmith's joke relative to the foreign black who played the tambourine, and bursting with the spiteful feelings which the taunt awoke in her fair breast, exploded in the manner we have witnessed. On the grim Pequod's forecastle, ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory; called a coward here, hailed a hero there! |
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