The name given to 2 types of musical stringed instrument:

• the Appalachian dulcimer - a fretted, plucked instrument which is also referred to as a mountain dulcimer or just a dulcimer and is often found with a teardrop or hourglass shaped body (as shown)
• the hammered dulcimer - which is a hammer-struck, trapezoid-shaped zither

The instruments are quite different, but are both members of the zither family of instruments in which wire strings are stretched across a shallow sound box. Depending on type, they are sounded by light, spoon-shaped beaters, producing a vibrant, undamped, metallic sound, or alternatively by padded hammers or plucked with the fingers.

One of the ancestors of the piano, the dulcimer originated in the Middle East, possibly as the Persian santir. It was known in Spain by the 12th century and by about 1800 had reached China, where it is called yangqin (foreign zither), and India, where it is known as santoor. Throughout Europe, the dulcimer is found as a folk instrument, for example, the Swiss hackbrett, the Czech cimbal and the Greek santouri.