rain stick
1
8.1
- noun
- /reɪn stɪk/
:
bastón de lluvia
- Children in the art class made their own rain sticks using cardboard tubes and small pebbles.
- African rain sticks
Examples
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Until I woke her up with my... African rain stick.
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Each group of participants joined me in a quiet classroom, and I presented the children with a box of sound-producing objects (e.g., rain sticks, cabasas, hand drums, pairs of rhythm sticks, claves) and invited the children to play with the objects in any manner they liked.
Academic text (2015) -
The musician created a soothing sound by tilting the rain stick slowly from side to side.
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During the ceremony, the leader shook the rain stick to invoke the spirits of rain.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a stick that produces/evokes the sound of falling rain' is directly and compositionally derived from 'rain' + 'stick'—a rod associated with rain sound or purpose. This compound follows a transparent noun-noun pattern common across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer the general idea (an object/stick related to rain sound), even if they might not know the specific cultural construction details.
Etymology
The noun rain stick is a long hollow stick filled with small stones. When you turn it, the stones fall and make a sound like 'falling rain'. People used it in ceremonies to 'call rain', so the name matches the rain-like sound it makes.