Harp

How to spell harp

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce harp

What does harp mean?

1. nounA large triangular musical instrument with strings played by plucking with the fingers.
2. verbTo talk or write about one subject repeatedly and tediously.

Harp in a sentence

• noun

  The orchestra hired a soloist to play the harp during the concert.

• verb

  My manager likes to harp on every tiny mistake from last quarter.

• noun

  She tuned each string of the harp before the recital began.

• verb

  Critics continue to harp on the same old complaint about the budget.

Where does harp come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Harp comes from the Old English hearpe, the name of the plucked stringed instrument, and it has close cousins across the Germanic languages, including the Old Norse harpa and the Old High German harpha. Scholars trace these back to a shared Germanic root that may originally have referred to plucking or to the curved shape of the frame. The instrument was central to early medieval music, and the word was so well established that French and Italian actually borrowed their own forms (harpe, arpa) from Germanic rather than the other way around. The figurative verb sense, meaning to dwell tediously on one subject, grew out of the idea of playing the same string or tune over and over. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable, and its simple four letters rarely trip writers up.

How the word is built

• harp (whole word; from Old English hearpe, a stringed instrument)