hypate

Unadapted borrowing from Latin hypatē, from Ancient Greek ὑπάτη (hupátē, literally “highest/nearest [string]”). The hypate was the "highest" in the sense of being the string on a lyre nearest the player and physically above the remaining strings (compare a modern guitar, where the low E string is nearest the player), but actually the lowest in pitch.

hypate (plural hypates)

1. (musical pitch) In ancient musical theory, the lowest-pitched fixed note in the nearer tetrachord on a lyre, always pitched a perfect fourth below the mese, with two movable notes between them, the parhypate (lower in pitch) and the lichanos (higher in pitch).

• The strings/pitches from lowest-pitched (nearest the player) to highest-pitched (farthest from the player) were the hypate, parhypate, lichanos, mese, paramese, trite, paranete and nete, grouped into two tetrachords, the nearer one stretching from hypate to mese and the farther one stretching from paramese to nete. The outer two notes in a tetrachord were fixed in pitch but the inner two notes could be tuned differently.