- 1木琴。（金屬片的通常另稱鐵琴 glockenspiel／顫音琴 vibraphone，但日常口語常把這幾種一律叫 xylophone。）
A xylophone is a musical instrument made of a row of bars laid out flat like piano keys, longest (lowest) at one end, shortest (highest) at the other. You hit the bars with small sticks called mallets or beaters, which have a hard round head. The sound is short, bright and woody — it stops almost as soon as it starts, so it cannot hold a long note. Strictly, the bars of a xylophone are wood; the metal-barred ones have their own names — (small, bright, high) and (with a pedal, a soft ringing sound). But in everyday speech, and in many learner's dictionaries, people call any of these a xylophone, especially the small coloured toy ones children get. So do not be surprised to see the word used loosely; among musicians it is used strictly. Countable noun: a xylophone, two xylophones. You PLAY the xylophone (play the xylophone, like play the piano). The pronunciation is the thing to fix early: the x at the start says /z/, so it is ZY-luh-fone, not "ex-y-lophone".
組成xylo-（木頭）+ -phone（聲音）。合起來就是「木頭的聲音」——名字說的正是它原本的材質。-phone 這個字尾在英文裡到處都是，凡是跟聲音有關的常見它。
同家族的字
- telephoneshares -phone (sound): tele- 'far' + sound
- microphoneshares -phone (sound): micro- 'small' + sound
- saxophoneshares -phone (sound), after its inventor Sax
- headphonesshares -phone (sound), worn on the head
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
xylophonenoun/ˈzaɪ.ləˌfəʊn/
- 1
entertainmentlifestylemusicAny musical instrument (percussion idiophone) made of wooden slats graduated so as to make the sounds of the scale when struck with a small drumstick-like mallet; the standard Western concert xylophone or one of its derivatives.
- All I know how to play on my xylophone is "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Would you like to hear it?
xylophoneverb/ˈzaɪ.ləˌfəʊn/
- 1
To play a xylophone or to play something else as though it was a xylophone.
- 2
To move above a ridged surface or series of surfaces so as to hit every ridge, in a manner similar to playing quickly and sequentially on a xylophone.
- my eager fingers xylophoning over the memories
- Like a cat, I arch into the back of the bench, my spine xylophoning along the slats while the tension of the day slowly drains out of me. I'm totally chill and mellow.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。