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The Spanish vihuela or (in Italian) “viola da mano”, a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, is often considered a major influence in the development of the modern guitar.

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The guitar is descended from the Roman cithara brought by the Romans to Hispania around 40 AD, and further adapted and developed with the arrival of the four-string oud, brought by the Moors after their conquest of Iberia in the 8th century.^[8] Elsewhere in Europe, the indigenous six-string Scandinavian lut (lute), had gained in popularity in areas of Viking incursions across the continent. Often depicted in carvings c. 800 AD, the Norse hero Gunther (also known as Gunnar), played a lute with his toes as he lay dying in a snake-pit, in the legend of Siegfried.^[9] By 1200 AD, the four-string “guitar” had evolved into two types: the guitarra moresca (Moorish guitar) which had a rounded back, wide fingerboard and several soundholes, and the guitarra latina (Latin guitar) which resembled the modern guitar with one soundhole and a narrower neck.^[10] In the 14th and 15th centuries the qualifiers “moresca” and “latina” were dropped and these four course instruments were simply called guitars.

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Before the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having “a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, most often with incurved sides”.^[1] The term is used to refer to a number of such related instruments that were developed and used across Europe in the modern era.^[2] Some types of guitars, which are themselves related to these European instruments, originated in the Americas.

The guitar, as usually defined, refers to a set of closely related stringed instruments created and used across Europe since the medieval period, making it a truly European instrument. The defining developments of the guitar occurred where it was especially popular during the modern era, in Latin Europe, namely Spain, Italy and France. Precursors of the guitar can be traced back as much as 4000 years to an Indo-European origin of stringed instruments once known in central Asia and India. For this reason guitars are distantly related to contemporary instruments from these regions, including the tanbur, setar and sitar, among others. The oldest known iconographic representation of an instrument displaying the essential features of a guitar is a 3,300 year old stone carving of a Hittite bard.^[3]

The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra (German Gitarre, French Guitare),^[4] loaned from the medieval Andalusian Arabic qitara^[5], itself derived from the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the earlier Greek word kithara,^[6] a descendant of Old Persian sihtar (Tar means string in Persian).^[7]

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The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that adapts readily to a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six strings, but four-, seven-, eight-, nine-, ten-, eleven-, twelve-, thirteen- and eighteen-string guitars also exist. The size and shape of the neck and the base of the guitar also vary, producing a variety of sounds. The two main types of guitars are the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar (of which the three main types are the classical guitar, the steel-string flattop guitar, and the archtop guitar).

Guitars are recognized as one of the primary instruments in flamenco, jazz, blues, country, mariachi, rock music, and many forms of pop. They can also be a solo classical instrument. Guitars may be played acoustically, where the tone is produced by vibration of the strings and modulated by the hollow body, or they may rely on an amplifier that can electronically manipulate tone. Such electric guitars were introduced in the 1930s, and they have continued to have a profound influence on popular culture since then.

Traditionally guitars have been constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut, or more recently, with either nylon or steel strings. Guitars are made and repaired by luthiers.