Guitarist
nounA person who plays the guitar, especially as a performer or professional musician.
How to spell guitarist
9 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce guitarist
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does guitarist mean?
- nounA person who plays the guitar, especially as a performer or professional musician.
Guitarist in a sentence
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The band hired a session guitarist for the studio recording.
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As a self-taught guitarist, she practised for two hours every evening.
Where does guitarist come from?
Language of origin: Spanish
This word is built from 'guitar' plus the agent suffix '-ist', which English uses to name someone who plays an instrument or practises an activity, much as in 'pianist' and 'violinist'. The 'guitar' part reached English in the 1600s from the Spanish 'guitarra', the name of the popular plucked string instrument of Spain. Spanish in turn had taken it from the Arabic 'qitar', and that Arabic word descends ultimately from the ancient Greek 'kithara', a lyre-like stringed instrument played in classical times. The same Greek 'kithara' also gave us the older English word 'cittern', a Renaissance relative of the guitar. The doubled 'r' of the Spanish 'guitarra' was simplified to a single 'r' in English, and the silent 'u' after the 'g' (kept to harden the sound) is the small spelling trap that survives in the modern word.
How the word is built
- guitar (the instrument)
- -ist (one who plays or practises)
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