Zither

Word of the Day for Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Zither \ZITH-er, ZITH-\, noun:

a musical instrument, consisting of a flat sounding box with numerous strings stretched over it, that is placed on a horizontal surface and played with a plectrum and the fingertips.

The fourth was a young man; he was seated in the window, with his back towards me, bending over his zither. But I could see that he wore a beard. When I came up the old man was playing the violin, though playing is not indeed the word.
-- A. E. W. Mason, The Four Feathers, 1902

...Natalie Lind could play the zither, as one eager listener soon discovered. He, in that far corner, could only see the profile of the girl (just touched with a faint red from the shade of the nearest candle, as she leaned over the instrument), and the shapely wrists and fingers as they moved on the metallic strings.
-- William Black, Sunrise, 1881

Zither entered English in the mid-1850s and ultimately comes from the Greek term for "lute," kithara.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com