Definition of "lyre" []

• A stringed instrument of the harp family having two curved arms connected at the upper end by a crossbar, used to accompany a singer or reciter of poetry, especially in ancient Greece. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Contradictories as _No centaurs play the lyre -- Some centaurs do play the lyre_; or _All unicorns fight with lions -- Some unicorns do not fight with lions_, are both meaningless, because in Zoology there are no centaurs nor unicorns; and, therefore, in this reference, the propositions are not really contradictory."
• "Thus the poet Melchior would never have consented to abandon what he called his lyre, to write a commercial prospectus or an electoral address."
• "Kinnor is more of a zither than a harp; therefore we render the word lyre, because only as lyres developed did harps result."