lira

plural lire · plural liras

1. The basic unit of currency in Turkey.
2. The currency of Lebanon (also pound), Syria (also pound), Jordan (also dinar)
3. The former currency of Italy, Malta, San Marino, Cyprus and the Vatican City, superseded by the euro

plural lirot · plural liroth · plural liras

1. The former currency of Israel, superseded by the sheqel.

1. A Ukrainian folk musical instrument similar to the hurdy-gurdy.

plural lirae

1. Any of a set of fine ridges on the shells of some molluscs

1. alternativeAlternative form of lyra.

   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

   2 more examples

   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

1. A surname from Spanish.

   1 more example

   Gonzalo Lira, a 55-year-old Chilean American who was imprisoned in Ukraine after allegedly spreading Russian propaganda then violating his bail conditions, has died in a Ukrainian jail. […] Lira baselessly branded Ukraine's leader a "cokehead," and described the Russian operation as "one of the most brilliant invasions in military history."

   2024 January 13, James Bickerton, “Who Is Gonzalo Lira? Pro-Putin American Expat Dies in Ukrainian Jail”, in Newsweek, archived from the original on 28 Aug 2024