In Hawaiian, a kīkā kila, or steel guitar, is the name given to a guitar that’s played by plucking its strings whilst also moving a hard object--usually a steel bar--against those strings.

That hard object that’s pressed against the strings is known as a “steel,” or, in Hawaiian, a “kila,” and is where the instrument gets its name.

Usually, the steel is either a bar that’s held or something that is worn on a finger. The bar-type of steel is often seen when a musician rests the steel guitar on his/her lap to play. The type of steel worn on a finger is usually used by a musician who holds his/her guitar upright, against his/her chest and stomach.¹

A key difference between the steel guitar and conventional guitars is that the steel guitar has no frets.

Most often made of metal, a fret is a thin piece of material commonly found on stringed instruments. On a guitar, “frets divide the neck into fixed segments at intervals related to a musical framework. On instruments such as guitars, each fret represents one semitone in the standard western system, in which one octave is divided into twelve semitones.” ²