[f. CONCERT, with fem. ending -INA, as in seraphina, etc.] A portable musical instrument invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1829, consisting of a pair of bellows, usually polygonal in form, with a set of keys at each end, which on being pressed admit wind to free metallic reeds.
(Often improperly applied to inferior instruments of similar nature, as the accordion, which has a single keyboard, sounds notes in one key only, and produces different notes on expanding and compressing the bellows.)
1837. Musical World, 12 May, V. 135. Master Regondi’s performance on the Concertina at several concerts lately has made a sensation.
1844. Wheatstone, Specif. Patent, No. 10,041, p. 2. This musical instrument has since [date of patent in 1829] been termed the concertina.
1854. Illust. Lond. News, 29 July, 99/3. Concertinas of a new description … the same as those supplied to Signor Giulio Regondi, Mr. Richard Blagrove, and other eminent Professors of this fashionable instrument.
1889. Pall Mall G., 2 Feb., 3/1. What most people imagine to be a concertina is nothing of the kind, but simply a double accordion … capable only of reproducing a very limited number of sounds.
Hence Concertinist, a player on the concertina.
1880. Daily Tel., 7 Sept. The concertinist is … the best masthead man of the fleet.
