A small Italian guitar or a diminutive form of the chitarra, often with a higher pitch and smaller body than a standard guitar.
From Italian chitarrino, a diminutive form of chitarra with the suffix -ino indicating smallness. This follows standard Italian diminutive conventions.
Musical history is hidden in these tiny suffixes—the -ino ending tells us that Renaissance musicians were experimenting with different-sized instruments to create new sounds, leading eventually to the modern ukulele and classical guitar variations.
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