A harp-shaped instrument of music set horizontally on legs, like the grand piano, with strings of wire, played by the fingers, by means of keys provided with quills, instead of hammers, for striking the strings. It is now superseded by the piano.
A Baroque keyboard instrument in which the strings are plucked by quills.
an instrument, invariably either inaudible or out of tune, used as an excuse for keyboard players to join an orchestra (see Continuo)
a clavier with strings that are plucked by plectra mounted on pivots
a plucked keyboard instrument that usually has more than one string per note and the strings are parallel to the key levers
a plucked-string keyboard musical instrument. The strings are made to vibrate by being plucked by plectra, or picks, or raven's quill or leather.
(harp´-se-kord). A keyboard instrument, forerunner of the piano; its bright tone is produced by plucking the strings with quills.
the principal stringed keyboard instrument from the 16th to the 18th centuries and the chief instrument of the basso continuo; small harpsichords were called virginals or spinets. The harpsichord resembles a piano, but its sound is based on quills that pluck the strings rather than hammers. It was superseded by the piano in the 19th century.
A harpsichord is any of a family of European keyboard instruments, including the large instrument currently called a harpsichord, but also the smaller virginals, the muselar virginals and the spinet. All these instruments generate sound by plucking a string rather than striking one, as in a piano or clavichord. The harpsichord family is thought to have originated when a keyboard was affixed to the end of a psaltery, providing a mechanical means to pluck the strings.