guitar [M16th] The ancient Greeks had a lyre-like instrument called a kithara. The Romans borrowed the word as cithara, which then passed into many European languages in many forms and describing different instruments. It appears in Middle English as the citole, a dulcimer-like instrument first mentioned by Chaucer, and as gittern, a guitar-like instrument also mentioned by Chaucer. In German it became a zither [1850]. The word guitar comes from the same word, by way of Spanish and French.