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Harp   /hɑrp/   Listen
noun
Harp  n.  
1.
A musical instrument consisting of a triangular frame furnished with strings and sometimes with pedals, held upright, and played with the fingers.
2.
(Astron.) A constellation; Lyra, or the Lyre.
3.
A grain sieve. (Scot.)
Aeolian harp. See under Aeolian.
Harp seal (Zool.), an arctic seal (Phoca Groenlandica). The adult males have a light-colored body, with a harp-shaped mark of black on each side, and the face and throat black. Called also saddler, and saddleback. The immature ones are called bluesides; their fur is white, and they are killed and skinned to harvest the fur.
Harp shell (Zool.), a beautiful marine gastropod shell of the genus Harpa, of several species, found in tropical seas. See Harpa.



verb
Harp  v. t.  To play on, as a harp; to play (a tune) on the harp; to develop or give expression to by skill and art; to sound forth as from a harp; to hit upon. "Thou 'st harped my fear aright."



Harp  v. i.  (past & past part. harped; pres. part. harping)  
1.
To play on the harp. "I heard the voice of harpers, harping with their harps."
2.
To dwell on or recur to a subject tediously or monotonously in speaking or in writing; to refer to something repeatedly or continually; usually with on or upon. "Harpings upon old themes." "Harping on what I am, Not what he knew I was."
To harp on one string, to dwell upon one subject with disagreeable or wearisome persistence. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Harp" Quotes from Famous Books



... we give to our beloved? The hero's heart to be unmoved, The poet's star-tuned harp, to sweep, The patriot's voice, to teach and rouse, The monarch's crown, to light the brows? ...
— 'He Giveth His Beloved Sleep' • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... Truchsess and Frundsberg considered themselves badly treated by the authorities whom they had served so well, and Frundsberg even composed a lament on his neglect. This he loved to hear sung to the accompaniment of the harp as he swilled down his red wine. The cruel Markgraf Kasimir met a miserable death not long after from dysentery, whilst Cardinal Matthaus Lang, the Archbishop of Salzburg, ended his ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... After them, Alexis, the Tarentine, displayed his excellence as a rhapsodist, or repeater, to appropriate music, of the soul-stirring poetry of Homer. Cratinus the Methymnoean, Aristonymus the Athenian, Athenodorus the Teian, played on the harp—without being accompanied by the voice. On the contrary, Heracleitus the Tarentine, and Aristocrates the Theban, accompanied their harps with lyric songs. The performers on wind instruments were divided on a similar, although it could not be on the same principle. Dionysius from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various

... depression. This extreme austerity prevailed through all ranks of the rigid Lacedemonian people, who indeed carried it to a length equally absurd and cruel; for they punished with great severity a famous poet and musician, for adding three strings to the harp; grounding their sentence upon a principle universally assented to among them, that the softness of musical sounds produced effeminacy among the people. Of the truth of their proposition in the abstract, there can be little doubt; it is ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... the same piece and material with their religion. Here, it is true, were none of the appliances which popular merriment would so readily have found in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that of James—no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps a hundred years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne


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