Definition
nounA long, thin and flexible structure made from threads twisted together.
nounAny similar long, thin and flexible object., A segment of wire (typically made of plastic or metal) or other material used as vibrating element on a musical instrument.
Sentence Examples
Lend me something with which to cut the string.
Pull the string and the water flushes.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English string, streng, strynge, from Old English strenġ, from Proto-West Germanic *strangi, from Proto-Germanic *strangiz (“string”), from Proto-Indo-European *strengʰ- (“rope, cord, strand; to tighten”).
Cognate with Scots string (“string”), Dutch streng (“cord, strand”), Low German strenge (“strand, cord, rope”), German Strang (“strand, cord, rope”), Danish streng (“string”), Swedish sträng (“string, cord, wire”), Icelandic strengur (“string”), Latvian stringt (“to be tight, wither”), Latin stringō (“to tighten”), Ancient Greek στραγγαλόομαι (strangalóomai, “to strangle”), from στραγγάλη (strangálē, “halter”), Ancient Greek στραγγός (strangós, “tied together, entangled, twisted”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Round Ormond's knee thou tiest the mystic string."
— 1700, Matthew Prior, Carmen Seculare. for the Year 1700:
"a string of islands"
— 1776–1788, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC:
"In 1933, disgusted and discouraged after a string of commercial failures, Clara quit the film business forever. She was twenty-six."
— 2012, Christoper Zara, Tortured Artists: From Picasso and Monroe to Warhol and Winehouse, the Twisted Secrets of the World's Most Creative Minds, part 1, chapter 1, 27:
"Strings and Flarks[:] The two most conspicuous land form patterns in water tracks are fields of tree islands and networks of strings and flarks. The origin of strings and flarks is a controversial subject that has been treated extensively[…]"
— 1987, Paul H. Glaser, The Ecology of Patterned Boreal Peatlands of Northern Minnesota: A Community Profile, page 51:
"[…] strings and flarks are again aligned along the contours, but the flarks are much wider and are often drier. Where the flarks are flooded they are curiously reminiscent of a system of terraced paddy fields […]"
— 1993, Shatrughna Prasad Sinha, Instant encyclopaedia of geography, Mittal Publications, →ISBN, page 335: