A small harp or a diminutive harp-like instrument, from Latin; an archaic or technical term in organology.
From Latin harpula, the diminutive form of harpa (from Greek harpe). Latin diminutives use -ula to indicate smaller versions of objects, and this form was used in medieval and Renaissance texts describing musical instruments.
The Latin diminutive -ula suffix is fascinating because it appears in lots of English musical terms we still use—'patella' (small pan), 'scapula' (shoulder blade-like bone)—and 'harpula' would have been used to describe small portable harps that traveling musicians carried from town to town in medieval Europe.
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