Home › Glossary › Letter T

Tambourine

Musical Instrument
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A frame drum with jingles, shaken or struck to produce rhythmic accents

Detailed Definition
The tambourine’s bright, shimmering sound appears in biblical, folk, and feminist poetry to symbolize celebration, prophecy, and embodied joy; its association with Miriam and Sufi dance links it to themes of liberation and the feminine voice in lyrical contexts.
Example
Example in poetry:
In a Yeats poem, the tambourine’s jingle accompanies a faery’s dance in twilight woods; A Sappho fragment (reconstructed) mentions tambourines in rites for Aphrodite; Modern Caribbean poets use the tambourine to evoke carnival joy and spiritual invocation; In a Rumi translation, the tambourine’s rattle symbolizes the soul’s ecstatic surrender; A feminist poem describes women shaking tambourines to drown out patriarchal silence; In African-American spirituals adapted into verse, the tambourine marks communal resilience and praise.
Additional Notes
The tambourine is a frame drum with jingles, used globally from Middle Eastern to Western pop; its shaking and striking produce both pulse and shimmer—poets might use it to symbolize festivity, feminine energy (e.g., Miriam in Exodus), or the duality of skin (drum) and metal (jingles) as body and spirit in ritual and dance.
Also Known As
jingle frame rhythmic shaker hand percussion
Skip to main content