timbrel

Diminutive of Old French timbre, from Latin tympanum.

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɪmbɹəl/

timbrel (plural timbrels)

1. An ancient percussion instrument rather like a simple tambourine.
   • 1796, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Religious Musings:

     Hence the soft couch, and many-colour'd robe,
     The timbrel and arch'd dome and costly feast,
     With all th' inventive arts that nurse the soul
     To forms of beauty […]

   • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter II, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

     "I ought to arise and go forth with timbrels and with dances; but, do you know, I am not inclined to revels? There has been a little—just a very little bit too much festivity so far …. Not that I don't adore dinners and gossip and dances; not that I do not love to pervade bright and glittering places. […]"

timbrel (third-person singular simple present timbrels, present participle timbrelling or timbreling, simple past and past participle timbrelled or timbreled)

1. (intransitive) To play the timbrel.
2. (transitive) To accompany with the sound of the timbrel.
   • 1629, John Milton, “On the Morning of Christs Nativity”, in Poems of Mr. John Milton, […], London: […] Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Mosely, […], published 1646, →OCLC:

     with timbrelled anthems

   • 1833, William Lisle Bowles, St. John in Patmos:

     Yet there the timbrelled hymn / Rings to Osiris […]

• Trimble