pair of virginals
- noun
- /pɛr əv ˈvɜrdʒɪnəlz/
- Archaic
:
virginal
- During the Renaissance, a pair of virginals was a popular instrument among upper-class women.
Examples
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The museum's collection includes a rare pair of virginals from early 17th-century England.
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A beautiful pair of virginals stood in the corner of the drawing room, admired by the guests.
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She played a beautiful pair of virginals at the concert.
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The pair of virginals was made in the 17th century.
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During the Renaissance, a pair of virginals was a popular instrument among upper-class women.
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The museum's collection includes a rare pair of virginals from early 17th-century England.
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A beautiful pair of virginals stood in the corner of the drawing room, admired by the guests.
Synonyms
1
9.9
A small rectangular keyboard like a simple harpsichord played on a table
A small keyboard instrument like a harpsichord used in early music
Surface Forms
Morphology
This phrase is fully compositional: 'pair of' means two of something and 'virginals' denotes a small rectangular keyboard instrument, so a learner who knows both constituents will understand it as two such instruments. There is no idiomatic or metaphorical shift here (the preposition 'of' is just a function word), and the 'pair of X' pattern is cross-linguistically common.
Etymology
Pair of virginals may come from a simple image: virginals were small, box-like keyboards often played by 'young women', and people in older speech sometimes used pair to name a single boxed object. That's why pair of virginals now refers to that legless, rectangular keyboard from the 16th and 17th centuries.