tambour

Meanings

1. A small shallow drum.
2. A circular frame for embroidery.
3. A rich kind of gold and silver embroidery.
4. Silk or other material embroidered on a tambour.
5. The capital of a Corinthian column.
6. Synonym of drum (“cylindrical stone in the shaft of a column”).
7. A work usually in the form of a redan, to enclose a space before a door or staircase, or at the gorge of a larger work. It is arranged like a stockade.
8. A shallow metallic cup or drum, with a thin elastic membrane supporting a writing lever. Two or more of these are connected by a rubber tube and used to transmit and register the movements of the pulse or of any pulsating artery.
9. In real tennis, a buttress-like obstruction in the main wall.
10. A rolling top or front (as of a rolltop desk) of narrow strips of wood glued on canvas.

1. To embroider on a tambour (circular frame).

Etymology

Borrowed from French tambour (“drum”), from Arabic طُنْبُور (ṭunbūr), from the Middle Persian ancestor of Classical Persian تنبور (tanbūr). Doublet of tabor and tanbur. Compare Armenian տաւիղ (tawiġ), and tabla.