VIOLIN, or FIDDLE, a musical instrument mounted with four strings or guts, and struck or played with a bow. The style and sound of the violin is the gayest and most sprightly of all other instruments; and hence it is, of all others the fittest for dancing. Yet there are ways of touching it, which render it grave, soft, languishing, and fit for church or chamber music.—It generally makes the treble, or highest parts in concerts. Its harmony is from fifth to fifth. Its play is composed of bass, counter-tenor, tenor, and treble; to which may be added, a fifth part: each part has four fifths, which rise to a greater seventeenth.