A variant or archaic form of 'zither' or 'cithern,' a stringed instrument with strings stretched over a flat resonating body.
An English variation of the word 'zither,' which comes from German Zither, ultimately from Greek kithara. The 'c' spelling variant reflects older English spelling traditions before standardization.
The dozens of spelling variations (cither, cithern, cittern, zither) show English in its wild, pre-standardized state—musicians of the Renaissance and medieval period would have written the same instrument name many different ways, and eventually only a few variants survived into modern spelling.
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