harmonica








noun

  1. Also called mouth organ. a musical wind instrument consisting of a small rectangular case containing a set of metal reeds connected to a row of holes, over which the player places the mouth and exhales and inhales to produce the tones.
  2. any of various percussion instruments that use graduated bars of metal or other hard material as sounding elements.

noun

  1. Also called: mouth organ a small wind instrument of the reed organ family in which reeds of graduated lengths set into a metal plate enclosed in a narrow oblong box are made to vibrate by blowing and sucking
  2. See glass harmonica
n.

1762, coined by Ben Franklin as the name for a glass harmonica, from Latin fem. of harmonicus (see harmonic); modern sense of “mouth organ” is 1873, American English, earlier harmonicon (1825).

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