Six-string / six-stringed guitar

Question

Hi,According to my googling ( and English corpora based searches) native speakers do occasionally use "six-stringed guitar" ( for "six-string guitar", which I guess is a norm in modern English).If you could explain the differences ( if any) between the modifiers "six,etc. -string" and "six-stringed" in more detail? Maybe "six-stringed" is just dated or something?Thanks you for your help with this....

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

vlivef
Hi,
According to my googling ( and English corpora based searches) native speakers do occasionally use "six-stringed guitar" ( for "six-string guitar", which I guess is a norm in modern English).
If you could explain the differences ( if any) between the modifiers "six,etc. -string" and "six-stringed" in more detail? Maybe "six-stringed" is just dated or something?
Thanks you for your help with this....

Such usage does not follow any set of strict rules. People say what they say, and some things sound odd and some don't. The guitar can go either way, but "six-string" is usual. In fact, a guitar can be called simply a six-string or twelve-string in the context of guitars: "Are you going to use the six-string or the twelve-string for that song tonight?"

AlpheccaStars · Answer

You can see the changeover in usage around 1970.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=six-stringed%2Csix-string&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=5&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csix%20-%20stringed%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csix%20-%20string%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Csix%20-%20stringed%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csix%20-%20string%3B%2Cc0

Six-string / six-stringed guitar

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