chime

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The volume of the chime is adjustable and it can be made as loud as buzzing up to 101 decibels.

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Definitions (36)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (17)

  1. noun An apparatus for striking a bell or set of bells to produce a musical sound.
  2. noun Music A set of tuned bells used as an orchestral instrument. Often used in the plural.
  3. noun A single bell, as in the mechanism of a clock.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (13)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (4)

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Examples (50)

  • You'll hear a chime, and his words'll appear on the screen. —  Marcia Muller - [16] A Wild and Lonely Place
  • A white-haired gnome answered the door chime, an ancient fellow in rumpled khakis. —  ElleryQueen'sMysteryMagazine,February2003
  • "I don't know if it's true, but I've heard that if the chime is taken back to its tree and properly hung there before nightfall, the victim lives Old wives' tale," Biscuit offered. —  Serpents's Silver
  • He touched the chime, and it sent out peals that went round and round inside his head. —  Serpents's Silver
  • Tannhaeuser suddenly starts from sleep: he has dreamed of his home as it was before his fall—of the village chime, the birds, the flowers, the sweet air; and he asks permission to return from this hot, steaming cave of vice to the fair clean earth. —  Wagner
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This word has been looked up 138 times.

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Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

peal ·  clang ·  cadence ·  tinkle ·  bell ·  hum ·  beep ·  chant ·  chuckle ·  chirp ·  trill ·  chord

Used in the same contextWord Family

chime:   chimed ·  chimes
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (4)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. From Middle English chimbe (belle), from Old French, variant of cimble, cymbal, from Latin cymbalum; see cymbal.
  2. Middle English chimb, from Old English cim-, cimb- (in cimstānas, bases of a pillar, and cimbing, jointing); see gembh- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from Middle English chimbe, chymbe, chime, chim, a cymbal, a bell, shortened (prob. through the accommodation form chimbe-belle, chymme-belle, as if from chimbe + belle, bell) from chimbel (cf. Old French *chimbe, chinbe, for *chimbale, cimbale, and so Middle Latin cimba for cymbalum), from Anglo-Saxon cimbal, cimbala, a cymbal, from Latin cymbalum, a cymbal, in Middle Latin (with a feminine form, cymbala) also a bell. The same L. word, through Old French cimbale, Middle English cimbale, cymbale, is the source of modern English cymbal: see cymbal.
  2. Early modern English also chimb, from Middle English chimben, chimen, sound as a bell, from chimbe, chime, a bell: see chime, n. Cf. Swedish kimba, ring (an alarm-bell), toll, = Danish kime, ring, chime.
 

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/tʃaɪm/
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