Noun: lira
| Singular | lira |
| Plural | lire; lira; liras; lirot; liroth; lirae |
Sample Sentences
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The first evidence of the Byzantine lira is in a Persian literary source of the ninth century. [1940, Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments, New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., page 275:]
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Some instruments comprise types which are found, more or less unchanged, also with various nations and periods (recorder, shawm), whereas others belong to smaller regions (byzantine lira, rectangular harp) or only to the territory of Serbia and Macedonia (drums, larger shawms, especially in the Turkish period). [1976, Musicological Annual, page 118:]
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Being an approximate synonym of cithara, the word lyra is most often applied to the harp, but one also finds it interpreted as the Germanic lyre, Byzantine lira (equated in turn with the Arabic rebab), hurdy-gurdy, citole or gittern, lute, etc. [1977, Laurence Wright, “The Medieval Gittern and Citole: A Case of Mistaken Identity”, in The Galpin Society Journal:]
Nouns inflected like lira
lira,
Etymology
From Italian lira, from Latin lībra (partly via Turkish lira, Arabic لِيرَة (līra), Maltese lira, Greek λίρα (líra), and Hebrew לִירָה (“lirá”), all of which are originally from the Italian). Doublet of arratel, libbra, Libra, libra, litra, litre, livre, and rottol. See: Italian Nouns '
lira', Latin Nouns '
lībra', Greek Nouns '
λίρα'.