tambourine

Tambourine is one of a small family of English words that go back ultimately to Persian tabīr ‘drum’. this found its way via Provençal tabor and Old French tabour into English as tabor ‘small drum’ (13^th c.). The Persian word was adopted into Arabic, where it was swallowed up by the similar-sounding tambūr ‘lute’ – so that tambūr now meant ‘drum’. This was borrowed into Old French as tambour, and passed on to English as tambour (15^th c.). Tambourine comes from a French diminutive form.