Editing Spinet (section)

===Nomenclature===

[[File:Epinette Rouaud.JPG|right|thumb|Modern bentside spinet built by Clavecins Rouaud, Paris]]
In earlier times when English spelling was less standardized, "spinet" was sometimes spelled "spinnet" or "spinnit". "Spinet" is standard today.

''Spinet'' derives from the Italian ''spinetta'', which in 17th-century Italian was a word used generally for all quilled instruments, especially what in [[Elizabethan]]/[[Jacobean English]] were called [[virginals]]. The specific Italian word for a virginals is ''spinetta a tabola''. Likewise, the French derivation from ''spinetta'', ''épinette'', is specifically what the virginals is called in French, although the word is also used for any other small quilled instrument, whether a small harpsichord or a [[clavichord]]. In German, ''Spinett'' and ''Querflügel'' are used.

A ''dumb spinet'' is a manichord or "[[clavichord|clavichord or clarichord]]", according to the 1913 edition of ''[[Webster's Dictionary]]''.