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plural lire or lira or liras
The basic unit of currency in Turkey. examples
The currency of Lebanon (also pound), Syria (also pound), Jordan (also dinar) examples
The former currency of Italy, Malta, San Marino, Cyprus and the Vatican City, superseded by the euro examples
plural lirot or liroth or liras
The former currency of Israel, superseded by the sheqel. examples
A Ukrainian folk musical instrument similar to the hurdy-gurdy. examples
plural lirae
Any of a set of fine ridges on the shells of some molluscs examples
Alternative form of lyra quotations examples
The first evidence of the Byzantine lira is in a Persian literary source of the ninth century.
1940, Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments, New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., page 275
Some instruments comprise types which are found, more or less unchanged, also with various nations and periods (recorder, shawm), whereas others belong to smaller regions (byzantine lira, rectangular harp) or only to the territory of Serbia and Macedonia (drums, larger shawms, especially in the Turkish period).
1976, Musicological Annual, page 118
Being an approximate synonym of cithara, the word lyra is most often applied to the harp, but one also finds it interpreted as the Germanic lyre, Byzantine lira (equated in turn with the Arabic rebab), hurdy-gurdy, citole or gittern, lute, etc.
1977, Laurence Wright, “The Medieval Gittern and Citole: A Case of Mistaken Identity”, in The Galpin Society Journal