Lamellophone

A lamellophone (also lamellaphone or linguaphone) is a member of the family of musical instruments that makes its sound by a thin vibrating plate called a lamella or tongue, which is fixed at one end and has the other end free. When the musician depresses the free end of a plate with a finger or fingernail, and then allows the finger to slip off, the released plate vibrates. An instrument may have a single tongue (such as a Jew's harp) or a series of multiple tongues (such as a mbira thumb piano).

Linguaphone comes from the Latin root lingua meaning "tongue", (i.e., a long thin plate that is fixed only at one end). lamellophone comes from the Latin word lamella for "small metal plate", and the Greek word φωνή phonē for "sound, voice".

The lamellophones constitute category 12 in the Hornbostel–Sachs system for classifying musical instruments, plucked idiophones. There are two main categories of plucked idiophones, those that are in the form of a frame (121) and those that are in the form of a comb (122).

According to Sachs,

The most usual [of plucked idiophones] is a flexible lamella or tongue attached to a frame, plucked by a finger and resonated by a small box.