Editing Spinet (section)

===Other uses of "spinet" for harpsichords===
[[File:BLW Spinet (1).jpg|upright=1.2|thumb|A sumptuously decorated pentagonal spinet from 1577 by Annibale dei Rossi; 49 keys]]
The pentagonal spinet was not a spinet in the sense given above, but rather a [[virginal]]; its strings were parallel to the keyboard. Typically, the pentagonal spinet was more compact than other types of virginals, as the pentagon shape arose from lopping off the corners of the original rectangular virginal design.

More generally, the word ''spinet'' was not always very sharply defined in former times, particularly in its French and Italian cognate forms ''épinette'' and ''spinetta''. Thus, for example, when [[Bartolomeo Cristofori]] invented a new kind of virginals in 1688, he called it the "spinetta ovale", "[[oval spinet]]".