lyra
Plurallyras
- 1A metal hoop that hangs in the air, used by performers to do tricks and spins.
Like a big hoop hung from the ceiling that a person can sit and spin inside.
She climbed into the lyra and hung upside down.
The lyra swung gently as the dancer reached for the ropes.
Similarhoop
- 2A small string instrument played with a bow in the folk music of Crete, Greece.
Like a small fiddle, but rested on the knee instead of held under the chin.
He learned to play the lyra from his grandfather in a Cretan village.
The lyra led the dancers at the village wedding.
Note
- 3A string instrument played with a bow during the time of the Byzantine Empire.
Like an early form of the violin from long ago.
Court musicians bowed the lyra to accompany singers in the great hall.
A lyra and a flute opened the wedding procession through the city.
Note
Less common meaning
- 4The middle part of the underside of the fornix, a curved bundle of fibers deep in the brain.
The students found the lyra while studying a model of the brain.
The vessels of the brain generally are often distended and gorged with blood, the lyra especially being fully injected.
1840, Alexander Tweedie, William Wood GerhardHere, lyra means a small area on the underside of a part of the brain.Note
Practice
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Origins
It got this name from the pattern of lines that mark it in the human brain.
It comes from the Greek word 'lyra', meaning a lyre.