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What (who) is virginal - definition
KEYBOARD INSTRUMENT
Muselar; Muselaar; Virginal; Ottavino spinet; Virginalist
![''Lady standing at a muselar'', by [[Johannes Vermeer]]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Johannes Vermeer - Lady Standing at a Virginal.jpg?width=200 "''Lady standing at a muselar'', by [[Johannes Vermeer]]")
![''The Music Lesson'', by [[Johannes Vermeer]]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Johannes Vermeer - Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman, 'The Music Lesson' - Google Art Project.jpg?width=200 "''The Music Lesson'', by [[Johannes Vermeer]]")
![''Woman at a muselar'', by [[Johannes Vermeer]], {{circa}} 1672 ([[National Gallery, London]]). Note the keyboard placed to the right.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Johannes Vermeer - Zittende Klavecimbelspeelster (1673-1675).jpg?width=200 "''Woman at a muselar'', by [[Johannes Vermeer]], {{circa}} 1672 ([[National Gallery, London]]). Note the keyboard placed to the right.")
![1689 Menegoni Ottavino from the Hans Adler keyboard collection.[http://hansadlercollection.blogspot.ca/2012/12/menegoni-virginal-or-ottavino.html]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Menegoni Ottavino, 1689.png?width=200 "1689 Menegoni Ottavino from the Hans Adler keyboard collection.[http://hansadlercollection.blogspot.ca/2012/12/menegoni-virginal-or-ottavino.html]")
![A typical muselar of the [[Ruckers]] school. Note the keyboard on the right of the case.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Muselaar.jpg?width=200 "A typical muselar of the [[Ruckers]] school. Note the keyboard on the right of the case.")
![1600}}, [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]].](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Rectangular Octave Virginal MET DT10869.jpg?width=200 "1600}}, [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]].")
virginal
1.
If you describe someone as virginal, you mean that they look young and innocent, as if they have had no experience of sex.
Somehow she'd always been a child in his mind, pure and virginal...
= pure
ADJ
2.
Something that is virginal looks new and clean, as if it has not been used or spoiled.
...abandoning worn-out land to cultivate virginal pasture.
ADJ
Virginal
·adj Of or pertaining to a virgin; becoming a virgin; maidenly.
II. Virginal ·vi To play with the fingers, as if on a virginal; to tap or pat.
III. Virginal ·noun An instrument somewhat resembling the spinet, but having a rectangular form, like the small piano. It had strings and keys, but only one wire to a note. The instrument was used in the sixteenth century, but is now wholly obsolete. It was sometimes called a pair of virginals.
virginal
¦ adjective relating to or appropriate for a virgin.
¦ noun an early spinet with the strings parallel to the keyboard, popular in 16th- and 17th-century houses.
Derivatives
virginalist noun
virginally adverb
Origin
ME: from OFr., or from L. virginalis, from virgo 'young woman'; the instrument was perh. so called because it was usually played by young women.
Wikipedia
Virginals
The virginals (or virginal) is a keyboard instrument of the harpsichord family. It was popular in Europe during the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods.
Examples of use of virginal
1. Banks, in virginal white trainers, looks a little disconcerted.
2. His clarification seemed so bureaucratic, so virtuous and virginal, that it only provoked more smiles, said Corriere della Sera.
3. She‘s also been a bisexual hippie hitchhiker, a virginal 18th–century convent girl and the goddess Venus.
4. Composer Richard Strauss conducted his Olympic Hymn, sung by 3,000 choristers dressed in virginal white.
5. The white dress for the virginal bride flew out the window with the sexual revolution of the sixties.